A Toast: "To Your Health"
But who will pay for it?
Canadians are facing a severe problem regarding their health and the future of the publicly-funded healthcare system. The baby-boomers are entering retirement age and adding more stress to an already financially-strapped system, and, adding millions of new patients to the healthcare load. As fiscal pressures increase, there will not be enough young tax payers to support the older ones who are getting chronic, complicated illnesses.
People are now living longer - meaning those entering into the system will be additions to the healthcare load, not just the replacements for those who are dying (fact: In 1997, Canadian life expectancy at birth was 79 years). Inevitably, this will lead to complicated socio-economic issues that will need to be solved, as well as, difficult ethical questions as the health needs of individuals begin to exceed society’s ability to pay. What is making matters worse is that politicians don’t seem able or willing to deal with it.
The technology that helps keep people alive longer is very expensive to develop and expensive to use. Likewise, the drugs that help keep people alive are very expensive to develop and expensive to use, consequently private insurance companies and provincial and territorial health care insurance plans refuse to pay for these expensive therapies.
If this is not worrisome enough, here’s another problem to add to Canada's economic distress: pharmaceutical and biotech companies are in business to earn a profit. As their profits decrease, they lose incentive to pursue new drug discoveries. Moreover, the lengthy drug approval process (i.e. safety and efficacy), stringent guidlines for drug pricing, an unbalanced formulary listing practice across Canadian jurisdictions, and, unattractive tax-based incentives for companies doing R&D in Canada, will undoubtedly cause this industry to pursue business elsewhere.
If things don't change soon, both Canada’s universal healthcare system and the drug innovation industry (including the jobs that go with it), will be things of the past.
Now, isn't it about time we toast to something else?
posted by D-Rocks at 10:49 AM
3 Comments:
Screw Cdn healthcare. You should move to the USA, you get what you pay for!
A "toast" to your blog would be appropriate!
Vector Head,
Adam Smith's theory that maximum efficiency and free market capitalism, setting the markets free and allowing them to succeed or fail with the absence of social and political control, would be ideal in a true free market economy. But tell me, where can we find one?
The drug industry is heavily regulated. Billions of dollars are invested into R&D by pharmaceutical and biotech companies every year with one goal: that when a blockbuster drug discovery is made the drug companies can benefit by being given a 'carte-blanche' for free market access and the ability sell them at desired high prices. In other words, a form of a guarentee that both ROIs and profitability occurs before patent-term expiration. Unfortunately in Canada, this is not the case; pricing of drugs is regulated by a spin-off federal government agency to keep them both affordable and accessible. Introducing tax-based incentives is, in most cases, a good solution to ease some of those financial burdens of the industry, subsequently making it attractive for companies to continue the pursuit of R&D on Canadian soil.
A Neoliberal Keynesian approach - having some form of government intervention and regulation - is often required for a sustained economic growth.
You are justified in your commment about 'economic irony' in this scope.
Thanks for comment!
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