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Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
To me, we're all barking up the wrong tree. Drugs are a very small part of growing and unsustainable health expenditure. You can't pinch pennies when you're bleeding dollars
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Really?
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Various studies have pegged Canada-wide savings from national pharmacare at between $4 billion and $11 billion per year, depending on how the program is structured. That’s based on savings seen internationally.
Canada is, in fact, the only country with a universal health care system that doesn’t also cover the cost of prescription medicine.
Administration costs represent another burden. Authors of the report note that every public and private drug plan operating in this country spends money on revenue collection, claims management and other bureaucratic functions. Savings from ending this duplication alone were valued at between $1 billion and $2 billion.
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http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edito...editorial.html
So that's between $5 and 13 billion per year in savings. Taken with this:
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Our current patchwork of plans does nothing to restrain drug costs. Spending on drugs is increasing by a remarkable 8 per cent a year above inflation, a rate we can’t sustain.
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http://pharmacarenow.ca/learn-more/t...for-pharmacare
It sure sounds to me like a fairly easy and significant win. If you are going to talk totals...
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In 2013, total health care spending in Canada reached $211 billion, averaging $5,988 per person.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
That's still roughly a 5% savings.