Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Canadians Pay Too Much For Generic Drugs
Canadians Pay Too Much For Generic Drugs
ca
system of drug coverage. Its like moving mountains f rom a political perspective and not likely to happen any time soon. T his is where generic drugs come in. Better pricing f or generic drugs of f er us a real opportunity to improve drug coverage in an incremental and achievable way. Lets go back to simvastatin. Ontarios public drug program spent $6.7 million on 20mg tablets of simvastatin in 2009. At the best international price, the province would have spent $0.3 million a savings of $6.4 million. Paying to cover all the simvastatin used in the province would only cost a small amount more: $0.5 million in total. T hus, there would still be $6.2 million in public sector savings. Universal coverage coverage f or every person in the province that needed the drug with no out-of -pocket charge would still save money. T he f indings dont just apply to simvastatin. In f act, there are more than 30 generic drugs where the total savings per drug under universal coverage would be more than $1 million in Ontario alone. Universal public coverage of every one of the top 100 generics would still save $87 million in public f unds if we got the best international prices. It would also benef it everyone by saving employers and individuals $158 million of f their prescription drug bill. Along with saving precious public f unds, better drug coverage would result in f ewer Canadians being unable to af f ord their prescription drugs, and improve their health as a result. Working toward competitive generic drug pricing is essential, and this week the Ministers of Health should continue work on this important initiative. But lets also seize this opportunity to make drug coverage more comprehensive f or all Canadians. It makes both health sense and f inancial sense. Lets not order any more $60 cof f ees. Michael Law is an expert advisor with EvidenceNetwork.ca and an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.