I started a new job and was reminded of the costs of my medication. My medication costs about $750 a month. Without my medication I’m pretty much useless to society. If I worked minimum wage, $750 a month would be 30% of my gross pay (before any taxes etc).

I’ve only been able to have great jobs because I had family members who helped pay for my meds when I was going thru tough times financially. Without that, I’d probably be living on the street.

I think we also have a moral imperative to help others. While not just health related I think most people can agree that if we have the means, we shouldn’t let anyone die because they don’t have enough money at that time. This is something that’s fully achievable and actually very affordable (for a country such as Canada).

If you want you can read the full report presented to the House of Commons here. The short version is that people would pay between $2 and $5 per medication with a yearly cap of $100. This would cost approximately 3.5 Billion in the first year phasing up to 15.3 Billion. That being said, after 5 years Canadian as a whole would be saving ~7 billion a year with Pharmacare as opposed to without. Meaning that we would have every Canadian covered for a total of 46 billion instead of spending 51 billion (across public, private and out of pocket).

Even if you don’t care about others and are fully selfish, you probably would rather save 7 billion as a whole, especially if that means having someone be healthy which means they pay taxes that help improve all the services government provides instead of living on the street and being a “nuisance”

Either way, we need a National Pharmacare plan and urge you to support it as well.