Verbatim: Health and Ageing
This Verbatim is based on a presentation to the federal government on November 17, 2023.Don Drummond is Stauffer-Dunning Fellow at Queen’s University as well as Fellow-in-Residence and Senior Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.Canada long ago missed the chance to properly prepare for the inexorable ageing of its population and its broader implications for healthcare, […] Marcel Saulnier – Getting on with National Pharmacare
From: Marcel Saulnier To: Canadians Concerned About Healthcare Date: November 29, 2023 Re: Getting on with National Pharmacare Over four years ago, the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare set out a roadmap to address one of the most significant areas of unfinished business in Canadian medicare. Fast forward to the end of 2023, and there […] Chris Bonnett – National Pharmacare: Get Practical, or Fail Again
From: Chris Bonnett To: Pharmacare Watchers Date: November 15, 2023 Re: National Pharmacare: Get practical, or fail again Two truths: All Canadians need access to prescription drugs, and drug insurance is expensive. Can we manage both realities? Imminent federal legislation requires us to find a way, but it cannot be the public model recently costed by the Parliamentary […] Verbatim: National Pharmacare – Time to Get on With It
A presentation to “Pharmacare Back on The Radar: Canada’s Need for Federal-Provincial Cooperation,” a C.D. Howe Institute webinar held on October 26, 2023. Marcel Saulnier is a health policy consultant, Associate with Santis Health and a former Associate Assistant Deputy Minister of the Strategic Policy Branch at Health Canada. He was also Executive Director responsible […] Compared to its peers, Canada falls short on seniors’ care – Financial Post
Via the Canadian Institute for Health Research, Canada was an enthusiastic participant in the Commonwealth Fund’s ambitious 18,000-person 2021 survey of seniors in 11 wealthy nations.(Germany, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, the U.S., Norway, Canada, the U.K., France, Sweden and Netherlands). It asked 68 questions about people’s experience with and perception of the health-care system and the health-care providers they deal with.
In our recent C.D. Howe Institute paper, we focused on the results for seniors care. We used 49 indicators from the survey to create five summary categories: access to care, care process, equity, the impact of COVID-19 on seniors and the health status of seniors. Such…
Drummond, Sinclair, Walker, Jones and Gladkov – Statistics Canada Identifies Deficiencies in Canadians’ Health: Governments Must Address Them Now
From: Don Drummond, Duncan Sinclair, David Walker, David Jones and Philipp Gladkov To: Canada’s Premiers Date: September 29, 2023 Re: Statistics Canada identifies deficiencies in Canadians’ health: Governments must address them now Two years ago, we argued that Canada pays insufficient attention to the promotion of good health and the collection of data and information on the health […] Statistics Canada finds deficiencies in Canadians’ health, which governments must address now – The Hill Times
Two years ago, we argued Canada pays insufficient attention to the promotion of good health and the collection of data and information on the health of Canadians. The focus has been on health care, the treatment and care of those already in ill health.
Policymakers could argue they did not have the full range of insights needed to implement a more comprehensive set of health policies at the time. However, thanks to a new report from Statistics Canada, there is no longer any excuse.
Unfortunately, the report clings to the custom of equating good health with the absence of disease, especially of chronic conditions, but does report on Canadians’ self-perception of their health status and…
Canada’s Marks for Caring for Older Adults
Every country has a different mix of policies, services and funding mechanisms that influence the functioning and results of their healthcare systems. Each country also has a limit to what can be spent on healthcare and might choose different strategies to try to optimize outcomes. By surveying populations about their perceptions and experiences with the […] Shortcomings in Seniors’ Care: How Canada Compares to its Peers and the Paths to Improvement
Among 11 countries surveyed by the Commonwealth Fund, Canada’s seniors’ care ranks eighth, ahead only of France, the UK and Sweden. At the provincial level, some provinces compare more favourably to international jurisdictions while others, particularly Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec, sit at the bottom of the ranking. PEI, Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba, rank […] Barry Gros – A Revised Scorecard for Ontario’s Proposed Framework for Target Benefits
To: Ontario’s Pension Policy Branch From: Barry Gros Date: September 20, 2023 Re: A Revised Scorecard for Ontario’s Proposed Framework for Target Benefits On September 1, the Ontario Ministry of Finance posted a Follow-Up Consultation Document on the regulation of target benefit pension plans, with a request for feedback by October 17. Among the three […] Chris Bonnett – Two Options to Get Better Pharmacare Faster
From: Chris Bonnett To: Pharmacare Watchers Date: September 17, 2023 Re: Two Options to Get Better Pharmacare Faster Nothing is more dangerous than an idea. Émile Chartier is credited with those words or similar, finishing with “…when it’s the only one we have.” Canada has tried for nearly 80 years to implement “national pharmacare” – defined here as a […] How we can actually achieve national pharmacare – Hill Times Op-Ed
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea.
Émile Chartier is credited with those words or similar, finishing with “…when it’s the only one we have.”
Canada has tried for nearly 80 years to implement “national pharmacare”—defined here as a fully public national drug insurance plan—without success. We should ask why.
One reason is an unrelenting insistence that only a fully public plan will work. Fifty years ago that may have been true. When Ottawa didn’t act, we found an alternative: provinces and employers stepped in.
Between us and a good-quality universal drug insurance plan lie four problems, all of which matter right now. The Liberal-NDP supply-and-confidence agreement promises…