VANCOUVER — The Green Party didn’t attract much attention Tuesday with its call for a national Pharmacare program.

Pity. Because, despite the conventional view that Canada can’t afford to subsidize medications for all its citizens, growing evidence suggests it may be the other way round — that we can’t afford not to.

The first hint is that everybody else — well, almost everybody — does it. Among the 33 developed countries that make up the OECD, only the U.S. provides a lower percentage of its citizens with a public drug plan. And only Mexico is close to Canada’s second-worst, 50-per-cent level. Every other country covers at least 80 per cent, and two-thirds cover 100 per cent. If small economies like Slovenia and Portugal — not to mention big ones like the U.K. and Germany — find this worthwhile and affordable, maybe Canada would too.

Secondly, past studies have found that 10 per cent of Canadians can’t afford to take their medications as prescribed, and a new survey suggests the number may be higher still, especially in B.C.

An Angus Reid Institute poll released this month found 19 per cent of British Columbians get no help from private or public insurance plans to pay for prescriptions, and nearly half are stuck with at least half the cost. As well, 29 per cent — six percentage points higher than the national average, and 10 points higher than in Quebec, which has the most comprehensive provincial Pharmacare program — have at least one family member who didn’t fill a prescription, or skipped doses, or cut pills in half to save money.

It is hard to estimate the economic cost — lost productivity, costly treatments if illnesses are allowed to get worse, or even premature death — of such a high level of non-compliance. But studies show the highest compliance rates are for drugs that have nothing do with saving lives — they are, in order of compliance, to treat erectile dysfunction, to provide contraception, and to relieve pain. But if these drag down the average non-compliance rate, then prescriptions for other ailments, including serious ones, must be dragging it back up.

A third reason to consider universal Pharmacare is a more easier-to-measure economic loss.

Green leader Elizabeth May’s plan sounded too good to be true as she outlined it — annual cost of $300 million a year for the feds to set up a national Pharmacare agency in return for savings to the health-care system of up to $11 billion a year.

But these estimated savings aren’t something dreamed up in the party’s backrooms — they are drawn from a recent scholarly analysis by UBC health economist Steven Morgan, a leading researcher in the field.

The issue, Morgan told me in an interview, is that the whole system is fundamentally flawed and inefficient. Despite recent agreements by the provinces to cooperate on drug purchases — an approach Morgan thinks is worthwhile, but not nearly enough — neither the governments nor the dozens of private insurers have enough clout with drug companies to negotiate best prices. Not to mention the millions of uninsured who have no negotiating power at all.

As well, governments spend $3 billion a year on employees’ health insurance premiums, Morgan said, and businesses pay several times that — money that would be saved if we had universal Pharmacare.

May didn’t pitch her plan simply as something a Green government would implement if her party is elected — a long-shot by any measure. Rather, she called on other parties to work together on this.

This isn’t likely to happen in the toxic partisan environment of federal politics, especially during an election campaign.

But given the Angus Reid poll’s finding that 39 per cent of Canadians strongly support and 48 per cent moderately support adding prescription drugs to the universal medicare program (B.C.’s numbers are 44 per cent and 47 per cent), it’s an issue other parties ignore at their peril.

dcayo@vancouversun.com.

===

Click here to report a typo or visit vancouversun.com/typo.

Is there more to this story? We'd like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. CLICK HERE or go to vancouversun.com/moretothestory