Pharmacare bill expected to pass Senate this week, then it’s up to the provinces
This week’s edition of who is saying what about public health care is compiled by Pat Van Horne.
Pharmacare bill expected to pass Senate this week, then it’s up to the provinces
“This standard of coverage means that all residents of a ‘participating province or territory’ will be eligible to receive free access, without co-pay or deductible, to a range of contraception and diabetes medications. Under this program, the cost of these medications will be paid for and administered through the public plan, rather than through a mix of public and private payers,” said Health Minister Mark Holland in a letter, reported by CBC News, October 3, 2024
Full pharmacare necessary to save lives
“Cost savings from pharmacare go well beyond having a unified Canadian power at the bargaining table when purchasing medications and having lower drug prices. Universal drug coverage is beneficial to mental, physical and societal health in a far greater number of ways that shouldn’t be ignored or dismissed,” wrote family physician Dr. Iris Gorfinkel and Dr. Joel Lexchin, CHC Board member/professor emeritus at York University School of Health Policy and Management, in the Toronto Star, October 3, 2024
Health support workers in Manitoba reach tentative agreement hour and a half before strike deadline
“We’re recommending to vote to accept the offer, and that says a lot… We see that this is a way to bring the important pieces around recruitment and retention — two pieces of such a huge collective agreement that we’ve got here. These are the core pieces we need to see, because we are valuing health-care support workers in the recommendation that we’re putting forward… We’re scheduling online information sessions, so we’ll have workers listening in today, we’ll have clients and people who access services listening in… All of these information sessions will go out to the members and an electronic ratification vote will follow,” said CUPE Manitoba President Gina McKay, to Global News, October 8, 2024
Canadian Institute for Health Information seeking to standardize patient data info
“We have the potential for that standardized data to come to CIHI in the future in a faster and more affordable way than maybe some of the ways that it’s being done today,” said Mr. Diverty, CIHI’s vice-president of data strategies and statistics. . . “Gathering this data can be quite expensive and can be quite manual. This is literally pulling information out of patient charts and putting it into another format and sending it to us. And so, for smaller provinces and territories, this can be a big leap,” said Brent Diverty, CIHI vice-president of data strategies and statistics, to the Globe and Mail, October 8, 2024
Canadians report increasing need for mental health care alongside barriers to access | CIHI
Canadian vaccines for the ‘next’ pandemic? Liberals say yes, maybe, with new industry/health body
“I think the spirit of Health Emergency Readiness Canada (HERC), which is this co-ordination between industry and health and really interrogating, as an example, … our regulatory and approval processes to make sure they’re logic based, to make sure that anything that is legacy, that’s done just because we used to do it, or things that slow things down unnecessarily. We’re really trying to work with industry to streamline that, so that we not only have the highest standard of approval, but that we can do it in the fastest and most efficacious way, and that includes an international co-operation. We have a couple of pilot projects where we [are] working with other G7 and other top Commonwealth countries on integrating our approval processes. So, if the U.K. and Australia approve something, how can we use their approval processes to speed up our approval processes and reduce duplication? So working on things like that, this is happening [and] we want to accelerate greater with HERC,” said Federal Health Minister Mark Holland, to the Hill Times, October 8, 2024
Public risk, private profit – Degrade the public system so the rich can go private
“Figuring out how to undermine support for public health care isn’t rocket science. All you have to do is destroy the public system, and then people will be willing to accept private health care. . . This appears to be (the Ontario government’s) strategy for weakening the strong attachment Ontarians feel for public health care, thereby enabling (the) government to plow ahead with plans to further open up lucrative profit opportunities for private health-care businesses,” wrote journalist Linda McQuaig, to the Toronto Star, October 3, 2024
Nova Scotia Nurses Union looking to create unionized team of travel nurses
“Our staff nurses do a better job at the end of the day — full stop — because they know the people, they know the province, they know Nova Scotians and that’s what we need and want. . . So (our mobile nurses) will be employees of the health authority, but they may work in Yarmouth for a bit and then go to New Glasgow,” said Nova Scotia Nurses Union President Janet Hazelton, who is working on an agreement to create a provincial travel nurse program to reduce the reliance on private companies, CBC News, October 1, 2024
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