Befürworter stellt die Fairness in Frage zu
https://nationalnewswatch.com/2025/07/28/advocates-question-fairness-as-federal-government-backs-away-from-pharmacare-program
Befürworter stellt die Fairness in Frage zu
https://nationalnewswatch.com/2025/07/28/advocates-question-fairness-as-federal-government-backs-away-from-pharmacare-program
4 Kommentare
Liberals doing a good of explaining why they should never ever be trusted to deliver their end in a supply and confidence agreement. Jagmeet Singh really thought he’d accomplished something but it turns out that something was limited to coverage of two narrow categories of pharmaceuticals for 4 years and applying to less then a quarter of the Canadian populace.
To my fellow dippers who said „don’t let perfect be the enemy of good“, enjoy your hats for dinner.
Universality of programs, or electoral reform needed to be the bedrock of supply-confidence. Not these pennies for paupers initiatives.
Leverage in a time of populism has now officially been wasted, the party is in irrelevant shambles, and the window of opportunity has passed.
*Rings bell*
That’s the reason why.the Federal govt should never meddle in provincial affairs.
Dental care is another half baked program that costs a lot of money to administer and delivers poor result.
Money would have been better spent negotiating with provinces to expand their own programs than recreating somethiing.at another level with another burraucracy and.some other rules.
This article makes it sound like it’s the feds that are backing away, but it’s the provinces that are refusing to sign on that are causing the issue with implementation:
[https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/most-provinces-are-refusing-hundreds-of-millions-in-federal-pharmacare-funding/](https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/most-provinces-are-refusing-hundreds-of-millions-in-federal-pharmacare-funding/)
>The *Pharmacare Act* is meant to provide universal access to Diabetes medication and contraceptives, making those pharmaceuticals free at the point of access for people covered by public health insurance. In order to implement that vision, the federal government needs to sign funding agreements with the provinces, who are responsible for administering health plans.
>Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island and Yukon are participating in the federal program, covering nearly 7.5 million people. The remaining nine provinces and territories without agreements are passing up valuable federal health care funding—which could be providing free medication to residents paid for by the federal government.
>New Brunswick would likely receive $136 million through a bilateral pharmacare agreement over four years. Nova Scotia would receive $171 million, and Ontario would receive an estimated $2.5 billion over four years. These are significant infusions of cash.
>…
>
>The *Pharmacare Act* stipulates that the program must be “guided by the *Canada Health Act.*” *The Canada Health Act* includes universality and portability as two of its five central principles, which cannot be fulfilled until all provinces join the landmark pharmacare program.
>Canada’s new Health Minister Marjorie Michel says she’s already meeting with her provincial and territorial counterparts, and many of her office’s key staff members helped to negotiate the four bilateral agreements under her predecessor.
>But she cannot sign more agreements without willing partners in provincial capitals, challenging public pharmacare advocates and patient groups to pressure both levels of government to deliver long-promised national universal pharmacare to Canadians.
So if the rest of the provinces don’t sign up, the whole program goes down, because it’s required to be applied universally across the country.
This was an issue they knew about before the election, and the previous Liberal government under Trudeau choosing to do it this way is definitely to blame (Manitoba signed their deal before Carney won the leadership, so even if he wanted to, and was able to do so without legislation to change the wording of the new Act, he couldn’t have changed that approach once provinces started signing on). This article below also goes into some of the reasons why some provinces will hesitate to sign up:
[https://theconversation.com/pharmacare-is-now-law-in-canada-but-negotiations-with-provinces-could-slow-progress-250888](https://theconversation.com/pharmacare-is-now-law-in-canada-but-negotiations-with-provinces-could-slow-progress-250888)
>Pharmacare could have been implemented nationally, like it was for the Canadian Dental Care Plan, offering federal coverage for essential medications like contraceptives and diabetes medications, while insurers and provincial plans cover the rest.
>This would have been a simple approach that would have allowed for future changes, and could have been implemented by provinces much like vaccines are — paid for using people’s provincial health numbers, sidestepping the difficulty of enrolling people in a new plan.
>But in the waning days of the current Liberal federal government, it appears the chosen direction has been to negotiate separate agreements with each province and territory to establish a minimum standard.