{"id":308785,"date":"2025-11-23T10:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T10:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/308785\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T10:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T10:48:10","slug":"expert-report-calls-on-ottawa-to-fund-essential-medicines-enshrine-pharmacare-in-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/308785\/","title":{"rendered":"Expert report calls on Ottawa to fund essential medicines, enshrine pharmacare in law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An expert advisory committee is recommending the federal government fully fund essential medicines for all Canadians and pass new legislation that clearly defines how a national pharmacare program will work.<\/p>\n<p>The committee was set up last fall and tasked with reporting to the health minister on the best way to set up and fund a universal, single-payer pharmacare program.<\/p>\n<p>Its report, released today, says creating an essential medicine list would allow the federal government to avoid negotiating bilateral deals with all provinces and territories, and ensure equal access.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It says Ottawa should deliver pharmacare through existing government drug plans so Canadians can get access to free medication with their health cards.<\/p>\n<p>The report recommends against a fill-the-gaps approach that would offer coverage only to people without private insurance.<\/p>\n<p>The committee estimates the cost of a publicly funded essential medicine list at between $6 and $10 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 21, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An expert advisory committee is recommending the federal government fully fund essential medicines for all Canadians and pass&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[97,243],"class_list":{"0":"post-308785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}