Letter to the Editor

Princeton Similkameen Spotlight

William L. Day

11 July 2018

The House Of Commons All-Party Standing Committee on Health has recently endorsed and recommended the implementation of a Canadian Pharmacare Program.

Many currently healthy people are not aware that prescription drugs are covered by our Canada health insurance only while the client is in hospital. Insurance outside the hospi- tal varies greatly among provinces and territories.

For example, the same out-of-hospital cancer treatment can cost you $0 in Nunavut; $3,000 in BC; $20,000 in PEI.

Currently, Canadians pay more for prescription medications than citizens in any other of the 29 wealthy OECD countries except Switzerland and the USA.

More than three million Canadians are under-insured or uninsured for prescription drugs outside approved hospitals.

Researchers have found that overall, 5.5 per cent of respondents across Canada reported they couldn’t take their medications as prescribed because of costs. In B.C., the proportion falling through such cracks in the health system was highest among all provinces and territories, at 8.11 per cent.

Unlike all other industrialized countries, neither the USA nor Canada have established a drug plan that would allow their national governments to negotiate drug prices on behalf of their entire population.

In summary, Canada remains the only industrialized country with universal health insur- ance but no national Pharmacare strategy for its citizens.

The Support Our Health Care Society (SOHC) of Princeton will be doing its best to acquaint Similkameen residents with our collective problem and opportunity. We will be providing information in Princeton at retail outlets and surveying our local public on the issue. We intend to inform our MPs and MLAs of our activities and findings. To date, they have been very receptive. Readers are encouraged to go to the government website to read the original complete document and join the discussion:
https://www.letstalkhealth.ca/pharmacare.

The power to engineer this change lies with us, with Ottawa and our collective Members of Parliament and MLAs. They are listening and waiting for us to signal our support for change.

The Time Has Come.

Yours respectfully,

Bill Day, Vice President, Support Our Health Care Society, Princeton BC

Patients Travelling From Urban Geographies To Rural Hospitals For Procedural Care: A Realist Consideration

“One unknown predictor of success, however, will be the willingness of urban surgical patients to travel to rural sites for care. This review explores the question of willingness to travel through a rural lens, reversing the usual scenario of rural patient travel to urban centres.“

http://med-fom-crhr.sites.olt.ubc.ca/…/RER-Scoping-Review-F…

Updated: June 30, 2018

The Vancouver Sun’s series on seniors’ care in B.C. brings to light challenges in how we care for people who bear the greatest burden of chronic disease. The provincial government has offered solutions such as hiring more care aids, opening additional long-term care beds and increasing support for seniors living at home. Readers should also be aware that B.C.’s medical doctors are working with the provincial government on the Residential Care Initiative.

Through non-profit organizations called Divisions of Family Practice (also funded by Doctors of B.C. and the provincial government), family doctors are creating local, grassroots residential-care solutions that reduce unnecessary hospital transfers, improve care experiences for patients and providers and reduce costs to the system while improving quality of care. All divisions have RCI projects, meaning that 99 per cent of the eligible 30,000 residential-care beds in the province now benefit from RCI work in some way.

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