Health groups call for better drug coverage
Published Friday November 21st, 2008
When Ross Costain moved to New Brunswick from Prince Edward Island in April 2006, he went from having provincial health coverage to none at all.
Now he suddenly found himself paying around $759 per month for insulin and other measures he needs to cope with the Type 1 diabetes both he and his daughter Latisha have.
“That’s a house payment,” he said. “That’s a mortgage.”
As it stands, it’s enough medication and equipment to cover a small end table.
That cost includes testing strips, which Costain uses to test his blood sugar levels four times a day, to determine how much insulin his body needs to be injected at that particular moment.
With Latisha, who was diagnosed last September, it’s more complicated.
“I have to check her sugar very often,” he said.
As well, her blood sugar levels can change quickly, sometimes in as little as the 25 minutes it takes to ride the bus to school.
Costain says constant checking is required to keep abreast of the changes, even during the night. For him and his wife, Rachel, relaxing their watchfulness is not an option, as the disease can be fatal if not properly managed.
Although a common number of times to check is around eight, he adds: “Children are a lot different than adults — their sugar levels fluctuate up and down a lot quicker, so we [can] check her sugar sometimes 10, 12 times a day.”
At $81 for 100 test strips, that’s a lot of test strips to go through in a week between the two.
And if some months Latisha was sick, requiring even more testing and insulin, Costain simply stopped testing himself.
“We checked her sugar vigilantly, but with me I kind of let it slide, which is not good,” he said.
Twelve years’ experience with the disease allows him to guess how much insulin he needs, based on what he has eaten and how much physical activity he has done.
“With her I can’t guess,” he says of his daughter. “It’s her body. You have to keep checking that.”
It went on this way for a year and a half until Costain, a fisherman, got coverage through the Maritime Fisherman’s Union, which drastically reduced his drug costs down to around $227 monthly.
His wish list still includes an automatic insulin injector for Latisha, which monitors blood sugar levels and injects insulin as needed. That would make it easier on both her and her parents, although its $6,800 price tag puts it out of reach.
But while illness in the family sometimes causes him to go without testing, he says it is nowhere near as bad as it used to be, and he and Latisha are doing fine. He praised the nurses at the Miramichi Regional Diabetes Program who helped them deal with the illness, even to the extent of showing school staff how to properly inject insulin.
But he can’t help but wonder how New Brunswickers without coverage, or on fixed incomes, can manage if stricken with the disease.
“What I’m saying is, I don’t know how people do it without insurance, without any kind of insurance,” he said. “When I first come here, I didn’t have any kind of insurance, and it was a struggle then, for sure.”
Research by the Canadian Cancer Society suggests around 28 per cent of New Brunswickers go without health coverage in one form or another, while the provincial government only covers around 27 per cent of drug costs.
New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are the only two provinces in Canada that do not offer what is known as catastrophic drug coverage, which kicks in when Canadian families cannot afford the cost of prescription drugs.
That’s what various health organizations around New Brunswick are urging the provincial health department to put in place.
“We’re looking for a catastrophic drug coverage that would sort of create a maximum level for people who would pay out of pocket, so they don’t have to run into those sort of care scenarios,” said Jake Reid, the regional director for the New Brunswick branch of the Canadian Diabetes Association.
His organization, along with several others including the New Brunswick arms of the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Canadian Cancer Society and the Kidney Foundation of Canada, met with Health Minister Michael Murphy last month to urge action on the catastrophic drug issue.
At the gathering, Murphy seemed aware of the lack of such a program.
“For me, the fact that this coverage does not exist for all Canadians is a gaping hole in our public health system,” he said, in a speech whose text was given to the Leader by the Health Department.
He noted operations costing $20,000 and more are paid for by the public health system, but there is no guarantee of funding for a drug that could cost $10,000.
However, he said the lack of such a program was simply an issue of cost.
With health-related government spending increasing at twice the rate of growth of government revenue, Murphy said the current health care system was unsustainable in the long run, adding that was one of the reasons for the recent health region reorganization.
Nevertheless, he said his department would be looking to change the province’s current prescription drug program, based on income and the ability to pay rather than age or disease.
“Even relatively low-cost drugs can be a serious strain for a single parent with diabetic children, or someone earning just above what is considered the poverty line,” he said.
He said such a program could have an additional cost of between $40 million and $60 million annually, but more data would be gathered over the coming year to discover “what is doable and at what cost,” although federal participation would be needed.
Reid said he felt the minister was sincere in his comments, and hoped immediate action could be taken after the year-long review was complete.
“It’s a large undertaking, and it’s not something that you walk into quickly,” he said. “By the same token, other provinces have taken this on.
We can’t wait for the federal government to do this. In all likelihood, they will not.”
Anne McTiernan-Gamble, executive director of the Canadian Cancer Society in New Brunswick, said such a program was becoming more urgent.
“The issue is that many people often find themselves with a very unreasonable or unrealistic financial burden,” she said.
“There are such a huge range of cancer drugs. There are new drugs coming out all the time, many of them very expensive.”
And diabetes sufferers Ross Costain and his daughter Latisha would be just two who would welcome it, if it comes.
“It would be great,” he said. “It would be great for everyone who has this disease.”
Disabled
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
