According to the UBC researchers, two-thirds of the population pays for prescription drugs out-of-pocket — to the tune of $4.6 billion in 2010.
"I think for the vast majority of Canadians that have drug plans . . . almost all of which require them to pay at least a part of the cost of the prescription drugs that they receive," UBC's Michael Law said. "So that puts prescription drugs on the table in terms of trading off."
He said this leads some people to decide that the cost of the medication is more that they can afford.
"Do we really want people trading their prescriptions off against their food?" Law said.
When people decide not to take their prescription drugs, it sets of the possibility that they are putting themselves at further risk of illness — putting a potentially higher burden on the health-care system.
In their findings, the researchers found that uninsured, low-income individuals had a 35 per cent chance of not paying for their medications, compared to less than four per cent of high-income insured people.
"It's a relatively small portion of the population, but it's an important one. It's the people who you'd most expect to be affected by cost," Law said. "It's an incredibly high number."
Law said the best way to make sure people take their prescribed medications is to lower or eliminate the cost of those drugs — a topic that is often avoided in the national discussion about medicare.
"Historically we've treated them as being somewhat different, in fact they've become, especially in the last 20 years, a fundamental treatment in a lot of chronic disease, and a lot of acute disease as well.
"I think it's about time we treated them as a fundamentally important, central part of the health-care system," he said.
Law said in discussions between the federal and provincial governments there has, so far, been no discussion about drug costs at all — what he called the "single largest gaping hole" in health care.
"Could you imagine what the public outcry would be like if one in 10 people couldn't afford to go see their doctor?" he said. "I don't know why prescription drugs don't get the same level of treatment."
Among the other finding is the study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, individuals in British Columbia are the least likely to take prescribed drugs at a rate of nearly one-in-five (17 per cent).
The causes, the researchers say, are likely a combination of the high cost of living, British Columbians' high debt load and the cost of the drugs themselves.
People in the Atlantic provinces were the second most likely to forgo their medication (12 per cent nonadherence) and people in Quebec were most likely to take prescription medication, with a seven per cent nonadherence rate.
Original Article
Source: Canada.com
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