Don’t count your pharmacare chickens too soon, Cohn, June 18

I share Martin Regg Cohn’s critique of the federal government’s plans for pharmacare, especially its repeated and maddening delays. It is absolutely inexcusable that successive federal governments during the past 50 years have offered weak and phoney excuses for their incompetence and failure to act to protect 7.5 million or more citizens who have no prescription drug coverage.

Think about that: At least 20 per cent of Canada’s population can’t afford most prescribed drugs. That number includes millions of seniors, people with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, new immigrants and refugees, poor, marginalized and stigmatized people.

They can’t afford to get sick because they can’t afford the outrageously high costs of essential drugs, including experimental drugs for rare and terminal diseases.

As an elderly person covered by the OHIP drug plan, I haven’t paid for most of my prescribed drugs over the past 10 years, but millions of other citizens are discriminated against, needlessly and unjustly suffering.

In the meantime, the greedy transnational drug companies make billions in profits by exploiting poor, homeless and sick people. And Canadian governments continue to betray Tommy Douglas’s compassionate and humanitarian vision of medicare that includes pharmacare.

I demand government action on pharmacare now. It’s a national shame and a violation of medical justice and human rights.

Don Weitz, Toronto

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