prescription drugs

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The existence of independent provincial Pharmacare programs and private insurance for prescription drugs is considered by some to be a blot on Canadian medicare. They want these options abolished in favour of National Pharmacare.

Health care costs are rising, and prescription drugs are taking up a larger share of those costs, but the change is a lot less dramatic than people think. Prescription drug costs were 8 percent of total health costs in 1991, and 12 percent in 2001, an average increase of less than half a percentage point a year.


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The Congress and state governments in the U.S. currently are considering proposals to import prescription drugs from Canada and to use government`s so-called bargaining clout to wring discounts from drug makers. Unfortunately, both initiatives are fraught with self-delusion.


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Doctors have a professional monopoly on prescribing drugs, and the profession’s leaders are right to worry about doctors who abuse this authority by co-signing prescriptions for patients whom they have never examined.