An inquest in Ontario is expected to expose the high rates of prescription painkiller-related deaths in Canada.
prescription drugs
Big Pharma and the real story behind drug costs
Canadians pay 16 to 40 per cent more for drugs than the average of industrialized countries. A national Pharmacare program, as a half-dozen countries already have, would save Canada over $10 billion a year on its $25-billion drug bill. Even other reforms short of a full national program would save billions in administration costs, drug costs (through bulk buying) and eliminated tax subsidies.
This claim is the argument of a report released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Since rising drug prices are one of the main drivers of a health-care system said to be headed for unsustainability, shouldn't we be curious about checking this out?
Health Canada fails to act as drug shortages impact trans men
An ongoing drug shortage is causing a hassle for trans men and other users of injectable testosterone.
Mary Potter is a registered nurse with the Sherbourne Health Centre's LGBT Primary Care Program. She says the most important thing for users to know is that they have other options for medication.
"The issue is when they don't come to see us or... they're told by the pharmacy that they just don't have it and people are waiting without the medication," she says.
Waiting, rather than finding an alternative drug, can result in a lapse of the medication's effects. "They should be coming in to see their physicians or nurse practitioners because they can be switched to a different compound."
Fractured health-care system sets scene for drug deaths
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Prescription opiate abuse now a public health crisis in Ontario
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Canada's prescription drug problem
An Ontario coroner's inquest into the prescription painkiller related deaths of a 19-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman that begins later this week is expected to draw much needed attention to rising death rates associated with this class of drugs.
These pharmaceuticals, especially when mixed with alcohol, anti-anxiety drugs (benzodiazepines) and anti-depressants, are proving lethal for more and more Canadians.
One of the latest high-profile victims was 28-year-old NHL player Derek Boogaard of Regina, who had been playing with the New York Rangers. His death earlier this month from a combination of oxycodone and alcohol was ruled accidental by a Minnesota medical examiner.
Halting rising drug costs in Canada
Workers at the Moosehead Brewery in Saint John have been locked out for three weeks in a different kind of labour dispute: over high drug costs. The company says it can no longer afford to pay 100 per cent of these costs to its retirees, and wants employees to kick in 30 per cent -- a reminder of the pressures of drug costs on private as well as public plans.
Meanwhile, one of Quebec's foremost public health specialists, Dr. Fernand Turcotte, co-founder of the Laval medical school, recently announced a shattering realization: "that the things I had been teaching my students for 35 years were not true."
