VANCOUVER—Racking up more debt or forgoing medication is a tough decision hundreds of thousands of Canadians are forced to make every year — and young people are especially vulnerable, according to a new study from the University of British Columbia.

Researchers found people who are 19 to 34 years old are 3.5 times more likely than middle-aged people to borrow money in order to pay for prescription drugs.

In total, about 731,000 people in Canada — 2.5 per cent of the population 12 years old and up — borrow money in order to afford medication prescribed by a doctor, said Ashra Kolhatkar, research co-ordinator at UBC’s Centre for Health Service and Policy Research.

Taking on debt is just one example of the sacrifices some people are forced to make in order to afford prescription drugs, she said in an interview.

“People also make trade-offs like spending less on food or heat or transportation. It’s one part of a larger system of coping mechanisms that people are engaging in,” said Kolhatkar.

“None of these things are what we want to see people doing.”

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Kolhatkar’s team analyzed 27,519 responses to a Statistics Canada Canadian Community Health Survey in 2016 for the study.

The report also revealed that over 60 per cent of people who borrow money for medication do so in order to pay for prescriptions that cost $500 or less.

“We’ve seen a lot of focus on high-cost drugs … but our data shows the majority of people who are having trouble paying for medication are paying for relatively cheap medication,” said Kolhatkar.

“This is a problem that affects people pretty much regardless of how much their drugs cost.”

The data suggests policy-makers shouldn’t focus on drug-specific policies but instead help groups of people who are more vulnerable, she said. UBC’s ongoing research shows young people, people with lower incomes and those with chronic health conditions are more likely to have trouble accessing prescription medication.

In a study released earlier this year, UBC researchers found 1.7 million Canadians who received a prescription did not fill it or skipped doses because of the cost. That study used data from the same 2016 Statistics Canada survey.

There is substantial evidence that shows people cost the health-care system more when they don’t take medication as prescribed by doctors, said Kolhatkar.

And yet the new Ontario government announced this summer it plans to cancel OHIP+ for young people and children who have private coverage. The program covers more than 4,400 prescription drugs for residents under 25 years old.

The program is still in effect until the changes are implemented, according to the Ontario government’s website, but there is no date specified.

The latest UBC study is just more evidence that Canada needs a comprehensive prescription-drug plan at the federal level, said Alan Cassels, an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria.

“There are lots of people, including colleagues at UBC, who have been calling for a national pharmacare program to catch these people who slip between the cracks,” Cassels said.

But B.C. is not waiting for the federal government to implement a national pharmacare program; starting on Jan. 1, families in the province that make less than $30,000 a year will no longer have to pay a deductible in the Fair Pharmacare program.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a very long time,” said B.C.’s minister of health, Adrian Dix, in an interview.

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The Fair Pharmacare program previously required people with household incomes of $15,000 and $30,000 to pay a $300 or $900 deductible, respectively.

“The evidence we saw indicated that (deductibles) were unaffordable for people and leading them to not take the prescription drugs they needed,” said Dix. “So, we’re acting.”

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