Think Tank Warns Clintonization is Canadianization of Health Care
Contact:
Dr. Bill McArthur, Director of Pharmaceutical Policy Research,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 224-5617 Email: billm@fraserinstitute.caRelease Date: 27 January 2000
VANCOUVER,BC>>> In his State of Union Address this Thursday night, American President Bill Clinton may tell Americans that the cost of pharmaceuticals in the United States requires the consideration of Canadian-style drug price controls. If implemented, he may argue, Americans can have cheaper prescription drugs without risk.
The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute says that evidence from Canada suggests that Americans should be highly skeptical of such claims. Canada's drug price controls are just one part of a state monopoly over a health care system now in crisis; over-burdened, forced to ration care and unable to shake off a straight-jacket of bureaucratic planning.
Government bureaucracy at the federal and provincial levels leads to significant delay in approving new prescription drugs in Canada. Canadians wait up to a year or longer than U.S. citizens do. In addition, price controls placed on prescription drugs harm Canadian patients. In the province of British Columbia, 27 percent of physicians reported that they had to admit patients either to a emergency room or to a hospital as a result of a switch in medicines mandated by the provincial government's drug policies.
In 1984, the Canadian government promised its citizens that health care would be "universal, portable, comprehensive and accessible." Today the Canadian health care system has not fully achieved those goals. The system is:
NOT Universal - For example, studies show that in 1997-1998 about 170,000 people in British Columbia - 4.2 percent of the population - were not covered.
NOT Portable - A Quebec resident who becomes ill in another province must first pay out of his or her own pocket for health care services.
NOT Comprehensive - Pharmaceuticals and many surgical procedures are generally not covered for those under 65 and often only partially for those over 65.
NOT Accessible - The Canadian Medical Journal explained that in Ontario 121 patients were taken off the waiting list for coronary by-pass surgery. They had become so sick that they could no longer undergo surgery with a reasonable risk of survival.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranks Canada in the bottom third of its 29 member countries for availability of medical technology such as MRI and CT scanners, yet Canada ranked fifth in 1997 national health expenditures.
American decision-makers should heed the lesson of the whole Canadian experience even if they are only examining one part of it, pharmaceutical price controls. They should not assume that they can adopt Canadian-style drug price controls without unleashing the dynamic of growing inefficiencies and public expectations leading to ever greater state control of the health care system.
The Fraser Institute has published a Backgrounder on this issue Canadian Health Care-A System in Collapse that can be downloaded from The Fraser Institute's web site at www.fraserinstitute.ca.
Established in 1974, The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy organization based in Vancouver.
For further information contact:
Suzanne Walters, Director of Communications,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 714-4582,
Email suzannew@fraserinstitute.ca
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