LAWTON： More socialism？ Government panel wants universal pharmacare
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Summary
A new report from the advisory council appointed by the Liberal government calls for a $15 billion a year universal socialized healthcare plan. Andrew Lawton explains why this is a bad idea, who's behind it, and why it's bad.
Transcript
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Good afternoon, Canada. Welcome to another True North Report. My name is Andrew Lawton, fellow with True North, here to talk about the last free thought platform in Canada, or so it feels with the shenanigans that have been going on in Parliament the last couple of weeks.
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But we're not talking about that. We're taking advantage of that and talking about the fight against socialism, which is not an exaggeration now because an advisory council appointed by the Liberal government is now pushing for a $15 billion a year universal socialized PharmaCare plan.
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So I want to talk about that at a fair bit of length, because there are a number of considerations here, not just the policy considerations and the dollar value, but the timing of it.
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Because anything that the government does this close to an election, knowing we're this close to an election, is something that you have to look at with a bit of a cynical lens.
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Not a critical lens, but a cynical lens, because the government is always trying to rig things in its favor.
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That's not exclusive to the Liberals, but it's something that incumbent governments tend to do.
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So I'm going to talk about that here, but I want to just give a bit of a background before we get to this point as to who the main players are of this.
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Because the chair of the Liberal government's Advisory Council on National PharmaCare is the former Health Minister of Ontario, of my province, Eric Hoskins.
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Now Eric Hoskins is a doctor, so he knows healthcare, he knows medicine, but he's also a former Liberal cabinet minister.
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Not just a former Liberal cabinet minister, but a former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister.
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And the Ontario Liberal government under Kathleen Wynne, and the preceding government under Dalton McGinty, these were very socialist governments.
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They were very far-left governments, even by Liberal standards, and much as Justin Trudeau is on the left side of the left in his role as leader of the Liberals,
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Kathleen Wynne and the Ontario cabinet, which included Eric Hoskins, they were all on the left side of the party and of the political scene at the time as well.
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So Eric Hoskins is an ideologue, even if he is qualified to weigh in on medicine, he has an agenda, and that agenda is going to be inevitably driving anything he says about this.
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So when he was appointed as part of the Advisory Council on National PharmaCare, it was a given that it was going to end up at some point with a recommendation for socialized pharma care.
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The whole committee, the whole commission, the whole advisory council was there to explore National PharmaCare.
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So the government does not spend money, and I don't know what the price tag of the investigation or of the study was,
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but government doesn't spend money to get a report that at the end of it says everything's fine the way it is.
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When government does a big giant study like this, and this has been going on for a year and a half almost,
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when government does that, government has pretty much already decided what it wants to do.
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They just want to have a big report to justify it so that they can say,
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well, you know, the experts, they looked into it, we didn't decide, the experts decided this was the best way forward.
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And I think that's what happened here, because the council released yesterday a 171-page report,
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and the crux of this report is that a new drug agency would be created.
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So a new bureaucracy, and this bureaucracy would look at the national list that it would form
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of prescription drugs that would be covered by the taxpayers, and this would start by 2022.
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Well, it would be implemented, it would be in effect before the next election.
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It would be implemented before the next election, and then they'd put in place a rollout to
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do the full version, a more comprehensive plan that would have more drugs by 2027.
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And the price tag by 2019 estimates of what it would cost in 2027, there are a lot of variables there,
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but the estimates today are that in 2027 it would cost $15 billion a year.
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And let's, the price is ridiculous, but we know it's going to be even more than that.
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So I don't even want to focus in on that number, that $15 billion number, because I know that that is basically a lowball.
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These things always cost more than the government say they're going to cost.
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But what this committee is recommending is an eight year long rollout to socialized medicine.
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The last bastion of non-socialized medicine right now is pharmacare in Canada.
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And what the government wants to do is move it so that we have in Canada complete socialism when it comes to healthcare.
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And I use that word socialism, that's a dictionary definition of what this is.
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You can say that socialism is fine, but you can't say that this isn't socialism, it is a socialist idea.
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But one big problem that I have, I have a number of problems, but one big one that I have here is that
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if Canada's healthcare system, the parts of it that our government mandated right now,
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was working completely fine, and everyone had great healthcare, and we were spending money efficiently,
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and there were no wait times, and hallway healthcare wasn't a thing.
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If everything in our healthcare system was working, and this idea of a big government approach to healthcare was working,
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and the government said, you know, this is working so well, people are healthy, we're keeping the cost down,
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the system is running smoothly, efficiently, everyone's getting looked after,
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I would ideologically object to it, but I wouldn't be able to argue with results.
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If the government was actually doing what it thinks it's doing, I would have to say, alright, well,
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it's at least a sensible discussion to have, but that isn't the case.
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And I'm dealing in a hypothetical there, because the healthcare system in its current form is not working.
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There's a reason that provinces, in particular Ontario, where Eric Hoskins was Health Minister for years,
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and did nothing to curb the rise of hallway healthcare.
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Protocols that have to be in place at hospitals to treat patients in hallways because they don't have beds.
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You've got, in some parts of the provinces, empty surgical suites,
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because hospitals burn through their allotment of surgeries they can perform on hip and knees by September.
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You've got wait lists for MRIs in some parts of the country that are going for years.
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You've got a patchwork of systems across the nation and very poor data collection in some places.
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In Ontario, this is what I know the best, the Ontario situation, the previous government, the Liberals,
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actually rigged the numbers so that you couldn't get accurate stats on wait lists,
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because they would only calculate waiting times from when you saw a specialist to when you were treated.
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They wouldn't count the referral to the specialist.
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So there are huge problems with the current healthcare system right now.
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Why is expanding that bureaucracy, why is expanding the scope of what government has to control,
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Now you've got a number of unintended consequences here as well,
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and I'm going to get through those in some detail, but I just want to rhyme off a couple of now.
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For those who are tuning in, Andrew Lawton here with True North.
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We're talking about the federal government's proposal now that it's received from the Advisory Council
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So basically taking the way that our health insurance works now and expanding that to drug coverage.
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You've got people that pay significantly into company benefit plans,
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insurance companies that cover drugs for people without issue.
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I don't know what happens to those drug companies.
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I don't know what happens to those insurance companies.
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I don't know what happens to the money being paid.
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Because what they're arguing here is single-payer.
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It's not a supplement to those who don't have coverage.
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So this proposal, as it's laid out, would replace any private drug coverage you have.
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Which means even if you're one of these people that has a good job,
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and you have good benefits, and you have good drug coverage,
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that may be replaced by the government whether you want it to be replaced or not.
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And this happened in the US when Obama introduced the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
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The big lie that he told, and I think he may have believed it at the time,
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Obamacare was forcing people to get health insurance,
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forcing insurance companies to make it available.
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Because the insurance companies needed to offset the money they were losing through Obamacare,
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Whereas right now, let's look at the way it's unfolding.
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The report says by 2022, so that is two and a half years from now,
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they want a list of common and essential drugs.
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And then five years from that point, implement the comprehensive list.
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Well, what happens if your company in 2022 that gives you insurance now says,
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ah, you know, we know the government's putting its plan in here.
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90% of the drugs that our insurance plan is paying for are common and essential.
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And let's say that you're one of the people that needs an uncommon drug,
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or a non-essential drug by the government's metrics here.
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Well, all of a sudden, the government's not covering it.
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Your employer's not covering it because they think the government is.
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even though you're already paying the tax money through this.
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but the point here is that behaviors always change
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when people think someone else is footing the bill.
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The behaviors always change when people can look to government and say,
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that we shouldn't be covering drugs for those who can't afford it,
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for those on disability, those who don't have access to benefits,
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that aren't covered by health insurance, for example.
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Yes, I'm all for finding a way to make this work.
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But to take universality and impose that on people,
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regardless of whether or not you have coverage,
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It is government trying to bring everyone down instead of lifting everyone up.
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Because we have to, and Margaret Thatcher gave this famous speech,
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which was, I believe, her last speech ever in the British House of Commons.
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And the Liberals were, or the Lib Dems or Labour,
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was taking aim at her for being pro-rich and pro-this.
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And they said, you know, the poor, or the gap between the rich and the poor,
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You know, what do you have to say for yourself?
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And Margaret Thatcher, spectacular woman that she was,
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you know, the poor were here, and the rich were here,
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and she brought everyone up, but the rich got richer.
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that the gap may have widened, but everyone was better off.
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And she said, you know, the left would love nothing more
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so long as there's less space between them and the rich.
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instead of giving everyone the opportunity to move up a level.
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So yes, let's focus on people that can access drugs that need to.
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that could actually ease up on the burden in hospitals,
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because people are able to take advantage of something
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And I don't want to get into these conspiratorial debates
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Yes, I know pharmacological companies have a powerful lobby.
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So I don't want to debate any big pharma stuff.
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but I just know there's going to be a message about that.
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So I'm trying to nip that in the butt right now.
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I hope, get Canadians to look back to the government
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Because again, if government is not doing socialized healthcare well now,
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what makes you think they're going to do it better,
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or even as well, if you add another layer of bureaucracy,
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add another program, another agency into the mix,
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And Doctors for Medicare is a Canadian group that's very powerful.
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They resist any changes to the healthcare system,
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even if it would be demonstrably better, demonstrably better.
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and I've done a video on this before, paid plasma donations.
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In Canada, it is very difficult in, I think, pretty much all provinces
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It's used for a number of medications and drug products
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Most people don't want to donate it because it's a big time commitment.
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So clinics in the US and in, I believe, Saskatchewan,
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there's one other place, Setup Shop, where they'll pay you.
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They'll pay you, I think, $60 or whatever to donate plasma.
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And the left has tried to ban that because they don't like the
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But the reality is that we don't have enough plasma.
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And the shortage of plasma has to be fulfilled by buying it from the US
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So Canadian Doctors for Medicare doesn't like it
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They do not like money-changing hands, so they fight it.
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I have no doubt they're going to absolutely love this because it means
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the government will further its stranglehold on healthcare in Canada
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irrespective of whether it's doing what it's responsible for doing now
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as well as it needs to be to be proud of this system.
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And remember, this is not an advocacy for American-style healthcare.
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I'm saying, as I've said time and time again, that healthcare does not need to be a binary
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The best healthcare systems in the world have both private and public components.
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And even a lot of these Nordic socialist paradises that the left likes to exalt
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as being the greatest countries in the world, they don't have completely public systems.
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They all have private options and private alternatives.
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So it's impossible to talk about national pharmacare or universal pharmacare
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without looking at the broader issues in healthcare because government's trying to say
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that it's doing everything perfectly so therefore it should be able to do more
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And the outcome, I've already told you a couple of examples, is that people are going to find
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themselves unable to have certain coverage because their employers are going to think that the
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government has and also that, and this is the big thing, government is not going to
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do things as adequately as they're supposed to be.
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So I would tremendously, tremendously like to see a greater discussion in all areas,
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but healthcare certainly, about where government needs to be and government doesn't need to be.
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So today, just today, perfect timing, I had to go get an x-ray done.
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Now I went to a private x-ray clinic that's covered by OHIP, which is the Ontario Health Insurance
00:17:09.720
So it's privately run, privately owned, but the government is the payer, if you will,
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I had a great experience when I drove into the parking lot of the medical building.
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I had to get a little thing and it says, you know, your first 15 minutes is free.
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Everything after that is, I think, $4 an hour or something like that.
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And wouldn't you know it, from parking, to going inside, to checking in, to getting the x-ray done,
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So I didn't have to pay for parking because it was that efficiently run.
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Now there's an example of how, yes, it's government funded, but it's being run with
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You go in some days, you probably don't get that experience.
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But other, I mean, family medicine clinics are like this.
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They're privately run, privately owned corporations, but the billing system is through the government.
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You go to hospitals, government owned, government funded, everything goes through the government.
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And people have nightmarish scenarios because hospitals have to pick up the slack of every
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other area of the healthcare system not being run as effectively or as adequately as it should.
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So I do believe it is essential for private sector and public sector to work together.
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I mean, the libertarian in me thinks, okay, maybe there's a way to do it without government.
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So the libertarian in me can just kind of take a step back.
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And I realized that there's going to be an option that will get everyone,
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So Priscilla writes, a national pharmacare purchasing plan makes sense, but not necessarily single-payer.
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Well, the problem is that I don't think you can have a national purchasing plan without it devolving
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Because once you create a single market, which is a big part of this, once you create a single market,
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you're not actually giving people access to the market.
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You're giving people access to the confined market that you've created.
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And that's a nuanced difference, but it is still a significant difference nonetheless.
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And not that I'm comparing, you know, aspirin to alcohol, although, I mean,
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some people might like alcohol more than the drugs.
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But, you know, you look at the LCBO, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the largest purchaser
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But that purchasing power doesn't give consumers cheaper or better access to products,
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because the purchasing power has made it a monopoly.
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So if government is the single purchaser, and in many cases, the single payer,
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if that happens, government also becomes the gatekeeper to what drugs you can have,
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And that's very dangerous, because we've heard horror stories,
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and I don't want to rhyme through them, because you can look these up very easily,
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but we've all heard horror stories where someone wants to get access to some treatment or some drug,
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The government won't cover it, the government won't allow it.
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Even when people are prepared to pay out of pocket, they're not allowed to.
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They only get more accentuated, those problems,
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when you make government the monopolistic source here, through which everyone has to go.
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Now, I want to read what Eric Hoskins said, because this is what the council proposed.
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They've said that they want a $2 copayment for common drugs, $5 for less common ones.
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And now, interestingly enough, that I actually like.
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I would love to see a copay on family doctor visits and, you know, basic emergency room visits myself,
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But he says that the council studied various pharmacare models,
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and they talked to 32,000 Canadians and organizations,
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they had meetings across the country, and now it's time to show courage and boldness.
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And do some nation building that would benefit Canadians in unimaginable ways.
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This guy is no longer a politician, allegedly, but he's using political language.
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His report, which should be a detailed economic analysis, is talking about courage and boldness,
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nation building, transforming Canada in unimaginable ways.
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And look, I don't dispute that a liberal government should appoint liberal people.
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But what he's produced here is a political document, not an economic one.
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I haven't read the whole 171 pages, but I've read the conclusions.
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And, you know, the one thing that people should find very dangerous here is that
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once you give government control of the healthcare industry, which it already has
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for the most part in Canada, once you give government control of the healthcare industry,
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you give government license to control everything else.
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And just look at the stories we've covered that I've covered here with True North in the last year.
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Things like government weighing a sugar tax, or warning labels on things,
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And the excuse that's always given whenever these nanny state proposals come up is,
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oh, but, you know, if people use this, if people drink a lot of sugar, smoke cigarettes, do this,
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then it causes there to be a burden in the healthcare system, and then everyone has to pay for it.
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So government's control of the healthcare system is an excuse for government to control every part of your life.
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And if you give government control of pharmacare in this way, and by the way, it's not about regulation.
00:23:10.840
Pharmacare is already regulated in Canada significantly.
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It's about regulating the transactions of them.
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You are, again, letting government control every step of your life because they're going to say,
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well, we have a vested interest in your health and your well-being,
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which means we get to control all of these other things that you do.
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And what Eric Hoskins said about this is that this is our generation's national project.
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So when he says that he wants to do some nation building, he's being very honest.
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let's complete the unfinished business of universal healthcare.
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That can be our promise and our legacy to each other and to all future generations.
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Now, I would say that universal healthcare itself right now is unfinished business because it's not
00:24:11.880
performing as effectively as it needs to be, as healthcare needs to be.
00:24:16.040
And I think we've learned that universality does not mean single payer.
00:24:20.360
You could have universal coverage without government needing to be the single payer behind it all.
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Universality does not mean choice has to be thrown out the window.
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But when he says the unfinished business, again, he's saying that we want to make sure that we
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railroad through every single possibility we can of government control of healthcare.
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And the one thing that the government's bragging about here is that the amount spent on prescription
00:24:47.160
drugs in Canada would drop by $5 billion a year.
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So the plan here is that if you have government, and this is what Priscilla was saying earlier,
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as the national purchaser, that you ease up on what people have to pay for it.
00:25:01.160
But again, the problem then is that government gets to decide what drugs you have access to.
00:25:07.320
You know, there's some, I forget if it was a congressman or a senator, but someone in the U.S.
00:25:10.920
just the other day introduced a bill that I quite liked, which was to let anyone,
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if they are facing terminal illness, try any experimental treatment they'd like,
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even if that's unapproved, as long as they're consenting to it.
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And I like that a lot, because you should have a right to your own healthcare.
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And all of these, my body, my choice people that you hear about in the abortion debate,
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somehow don't seem to be as fervent in their advocacy of choice over where you get your healthcare from.
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And there's a, there's a big, a big glaring hole in the liberals' argument on this,
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that you should have the choice, the freedom to do all this stuff.
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But when it comes to healthcare, you've got to go through the Politburo, you've got to go through the government.
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And that is fundamentally wrong and fundamentally inefficient and ineffective.
00:26:00.040
And again, the answer to this question was already determined before the question was even asked.
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There's no doubt in my mind, despite the council's claim that it studied all of these systems,
00:26:11.160
that it was going to this inevitably, that this was what they had already decided.
00:26:17.480
Justin Trudeau had already decided he wanted rank balloting before he even said,
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And then it ended up where that became just such a colossal backfire on him that he had to,
00:26:32.920
But the timing of this, just to close off on this point is relevant,
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because this process could have been done months ago.
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But Justin Trudeau knew that this report was coming.
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And more importantly, he knows that the election is in October,
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and that the parliamentary session is basically done.
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So the only thing that politicians are doing between now and October is campaigning.
00:27:06.680
is he's allowed himself to be able to say during the election,
00:27:10.520
we now have this study that says National Pharmacare is what Canada needs.
00:27:14.280
It doesn't matter if it's a Liberal-approved Liberal Commission study.
00:27:18.040
But so he can say, we're going to implement this if we get elected.
00:27:22.520
Which is why it's important that Canadians know the facts of these.
00:27:25.560
Look, I'm a very firm believer, unfortunately, that a lot of people love the giveaways
00:27:32.280
without necessarily knowing whether it makes sense,
00:27:40.840
I mean, we haven't even gotten to the part of this question yet,
00:27:43.480
where we have to figure out where that $15 billion a year is going to come from.
00:27:48.040
But you look further to that point, and there's a sobering aspect of this,
00:28:02.120
So it's very realistic that the cost of administering this scheme
00:28:06.280
will outweigh any of those purported $5 billion a year in savings,
00:28:14.600
But I may have told the story before, it's a very short one, don't worry.
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When I was campaigning a year ago, or I guess a year and a couple of weeks ago now,
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in the provincial election, you know, the NDP was planning to, if elected,
00:28:27.960
put forward universal dental care, which is going to come next.
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Once the pharmacare is in, dental care is next.
00:28:34.840
But there was a woman that I talked to, upper middle class woman, nice house,
00:28:41.240
well, you know, I'm thinking of voting NDP, I really like that idea of universal dental care.
00:28:45.960
And I said, look, I get that. I get that it's expensive, and I understand people wanting coverage,
00:28:50.440
but the big question is, who's going to pay for it?
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And she looked at me and said, oh, I never thought of that.
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I don't know if she voted for me or not, but we had a great conversation.
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But she heard this giveaway and never even crossed her mind that you have to find a way to pay for it.
00:29:10.600
And I fear that that's going to dictate a lot of the reaction to this national pharmacare pitch as well.
00:29:19.000
If you've got to get a prescription filled, not having to pay more than $2 or $4 or $6,
00:29:23.560
but people saying that, yes, it's a great idea,
00:29:28.040
without thinking of what needs to be the most fundamental question, can we even afford this?
00:29:33.480
And Trudeau already has had to keep bumping back, bumping back, bumping back,
00:29:40.840
To throw a $15 billion a year expenditure in there and think the math is going to add up,
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If you are able to give us a hand in covering the stories the mainstream media is not,
00:30:01.240
If you have any questions, shoot me an email, andrew at andrewlawton.ca.