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effective new drugs can improve cancer patient suffering and meaningfully prolong life. but on average, canada takes twice as long as our peers to publicly fund effective new medications. between 2012 and 2021, we ranked a dismal 22 out of 29 of reporting oecd countries in the proportion of new drugs that were publicly funded. we beat mexico and turkey, but not by much. this funding choke point means canadians suffer and die while being denied access to therapies that might help them if they lived elsewhere.
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from 1985 to 1990, canada ranked fourth internationally in terms of healthcare spending per capita and seventh on life expectancy . by 2020/2022, we ranked 12th on health care spending and 16th on life expectancy. it is projected that we will rank 27th on life expectancy by 2040 . are any of us ok with this? our loved ones deserve better than that.
money alone will not fix this, but money is an essential component. we must either spend more, or else accept rapidly deteriorating healthcare. you get what you pay for. to increase per capita healthcare spending to match countries with second, third or fourth highest spending (switzerland, germany, and norway) would mean increases of 27.4 per cent, 26.8 per cent, or 23 per cent, respectively. we could do this either from increased taxes and reprioritizing public expenditures or from increasing healthcare privatization. but increased privatization is not an effective option if governments just use it as an opportunity to further limit their contribution so that choke points remain unimproved.
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dr. david j stewart is an ottawa medical oncologist and author of “a short primer on why cancer still sucks” (amazon books). he writes on behalf of “physicians for improved access to health care,” which includes: dr. sandeep sehdev, medical oncologist, university of ottawa; dr. alan kaplan, family physician, aurora, ontario; dr. gerald batist, medical oncologist, mcgill university; dr. paul wheatley-price, medical oncologist, university of ottawa; dr. shaun goodman, cardiologist, unity health, toronto; dr. silvana spadafora, medical oncologist, algoma district cancer program; and dr. joanna gotfrit, medical oncologist, university of ottawa.