Health Coalition co-ordinator calls for national public drug plan

Canada must adopt a universal public drug plan, the national co-ordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition said in P.E.I. last week.
Rumors about the public health system not being sustainable are false, said Michael McBane while meeting with Health Minister Carolyn Bertram.
There's a campaign by powerful voices in the private health sector that says the public health-care system isn't sustainable, but that's wrong, said McBane. The public system is well managed and a study by the Finance Department in Ottawa determined it's sustainable for the next 40 years, he said.
"We're one of the richest countries in the world, so the notion that we can't afford a public health-care system is ludicrous."
Political choices determine sustainability, said McBane. If Canada switched to a public drug plan, it would save billions by having the country negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, not the individual provinces, he said.
"We're spending $30 billion this year on pharmaceuticals. If you brought that into the public system you'd be spending less money because you'd be able to get bargain prices."
While the public health-care system sees treatment as the right to stay healthy, private health care views it as a profit from illness and has no cost control, he said.
"A lot of Canadians don't realize this, but if you're sick you're not eligible for private insurance," he said. "It's called pre-existing conditions."
Health-care spending in Canada only went beyond four per cent of the GDP twice between 1975 and 2009, both times during an economic recession, said McBane.
The claim that public health care gobbles up more of the budget every year isn't true, said McBane.
The spending is stable but looks like it's gone up because revenues are shrinking, he said.
"When the government cuts taxes and other programs, health care is automatically going to take a bigger piece of the pie because overall revenues are down."
Tax cuts are the real issue, said McBane.
Canada has a growing population that needs serious public investment for future health-care and social programs.
From 1998 to 2005, $250 billion was lost in revenues through tax cuts and a $108-billion increase in health care.