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Broderick’s dilemma throws the spotlight on a dirty little secret: Canadian medications prices are the second highest globally and we pay far too much for generic drugs.

It is not uncommon for patients like Broderick, with complex health issues, to end up hundreds of dollars a month out of pocket because of their prescriptions.

Many Canadians stop taking the drugs they need because they can’t afford them. More than one in 10 don’t fill a prescription because of cost, says a 2012 Canadian Medical Association Journal study.

South of the border, price increases of medications such as the EpiPen continue to make headlines. Two-thirds of Americans surveyed in a September Kaiser health poll favoured importing drugs from Canada because of rising prices.

But they might not realize Canada is not much better than the U.S. when it comes to drug cost. A recent policy brief from the advocacy group Public Citizen concluded how the U.S. and Canada provide pharmacare are anomalies when compared to all other members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — both countries are characterized by “very high drug costs, lack of cost-efficiency, significant waste, and a large proportion of their populations not being able to fill prescriptions due to financial reasons.”

The best systems have a national formulary (list of drugs covered) with single purchaser paying power, says Steve Morgan, a health policy professor at the University of British Columbia. New Zealand has a much smaller population than Canada, but negotiates brand-name drug prices that are about 40 per cent lower and generic drug prices that are 90 per cent lower than Canadian prices because it buys medications as a country.