Canadians could get the wrong idea about the cost of prescription drugs in this country, now that U.S. President Donald Trump is encouraging Americans to raid the medicine cabinet of the Great White North for medications unaffordable in the Lower 48. Then again, Trump’s “safe importation action plan,” unveiled last week, might usefully get Canadians talking about deficiencies in our own drug pricing. Canada pays some of the world’s highest prices for generic drugs. We are the only country with universal medicare that doesn’t also provide universal drug coverage. And the $34 billion that Canadians spent on prescription drugs last year is the third-highest in the world on a per capita basis.Universal drug coverage, or pharmacare, will be an issue in the October federal election campaign – a major one, if anything comes of Trump’s importation plan. Trump is poised to authorize pilot projects by U.S. states, pharmacists and wholesalers to import from Canada medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Seldom has the U.S. so quickly united Canadians in opposition to an American idea. It took about a minute for the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), the Canadian Pharmacists Association and 14 other medical groups to formally protest the latest peculiar Trump notion to Ottawa.“Pharmacies in Canada are resourced to serve the Canadian public,” the CMA said. Canada is “not equipped to support the needs of a country 10 times its size” without running short of medications for ourselves. What’s required in the U.S. is a counterpart to the Canadian and European systems of federal price regulation of patented drugs. And what’s required in Canada is a similar tribunal for generic medications. The U.S. Fed has Canada’s backCanada benefits from the recent easing in U.S. monetary policy. With its modest 0.25 per cent cut to its key lending rate, the U.S. Federal Reserve Boa ...
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