When the Pharmacare Act came up for debate in the House of Commons, Conservative MPs rose to speak against it brandishing a statistic they thought would end the debate once and for all.
“We know that 97.2% of Canadians are already eligible for some form of prescription drug coverage, which is not some funny Conservative talking point,” Conservative health critic Stephen Ellis declared. “I think it is important to point that out because we are attempting to have an honest conversation here.”
That 97% statistic has been repeatedly used by Conservative MPs to justify their opposition to the Pharmacare Act. It has also been cited frequently in the corporate media, without any explanations of where it came from.
But it is hardly the basis for an honest conversation. The figure has been denounced by leading health policy experts as one of the most pernicious “lies” told by opponents of pharmacare. Its source is astudy funded by Big Pharma’s main lobby group, Innovative Medicines Canada, released by the Conference Board of Canada.
The study was released in May 2022, shortly after the supply and confidence deal between the Liberals and the NDP put pharmacare back on the political agenda. And it was hardly the first time the Conference Board had conducted research funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
The actual figure of people without drug insurance is nearly 20%, according to Statistics Canada. And the quantity of people without drug coverage, moreover, says nothing about the quality of the coverage that 80% of Canadians get from the existing patchwork of private and public plans, which is often far from adequate.
Nearly a quarter of Canadians can’t afford to fill their prescriptions and millions more are struggling to pay their pharmacy bills. Drug prices are so high that even people covered by public or private plans often struggle to afford their medications. The need for a universal pharmacare program has never been clearer.
The 97% number is a perfect example of how Big Pharma poisons the public debate on issues that could affect its interests, like pharmacare. It’s a product of what journalist Alex Zaitchik describes as “the echo chamber of ideas, studies, and surveys that the pharmaceutical industry has used to buffer an increasingly indefensible system against regular episodes of public outrage and political challenge.”
It is one of the many “deceptive memes” that Big Pharma, the insurance giants, and their think tank allies have spun out in the hopes of frustrating any attempt to have a truly honest conversation about pharmacare.
Last week, we released a first excerpt from our research dossier on Big Pharma’s funding of think tanks that showed how a host of “free market” think tanks like the Fraser Institute have been recruited to defend the industry’s interests. As this second excerpt shows, these corrosive financial ties extend to more respectable, “establishment” voices like the Conference Board of Canada as well.
To read the full research dossier, “A Prescription for Profit: Exposing Big Pharma’s campaign of misinformation on pharmacare,” click here.
Steering Canada Away from Pharmacare:
The Conference Board of Canada’s Canadian Alliance for Sustainable Health Care
The Conference Board of Canada insists that its research is “objective and non-partisan” and that it does not “lobby for specific interests.” But while the research institute may not lobby directly for its corporate sponsors, it has provided an enormous amount of grist for industry lobbyists’ mill, in the form of conferences, reports, and analyses that downplay the urgent need for national pharmacare.
In 2011, the Conference Board of Canada launched the Canadian Alliance for Sustainable Health Care (CASHC) – a multi-million dollar health care research initiative that it operated until 2020. Over the years, CASHC investors have included pharmaceutical lobby group Innovative Medicines Canada and pharma companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, Roche, Sanofi, and Merck. Insurance companies Sun Life, Green Shield, and Great-West Life Assurance (now known as Canada Life) also funded the CASHC.
Investors in the CASHC got to provide “input on CASHC’s annual research program, and the opportunity to serve on research advisory committees,” according to Conference Board promotional materials. They also received pre-release access to CASHC research. Major funders of the CASHC were given the added privilege of directing research funds to priority areas of their choosing and the ability to request “custom activities (e.g. custom research, workshops, webinars, conferences).”
The Conference Board’s attention would turn to pharmacare in 2017, as Parliament’s Standing Committee on Health began studying the issue. In April 2017, the CASHC hosted a conference on access to medicines, sponsored by Innovative Medicines Canada, AbbVie and Sun Life. The conference speakers included the CEOs of Innovative Medicines Canada and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association, as well as a number of other pharma and insurance industry executives and lobbyists. The pharma-funded Canadian Health Policy Institute’s Nigel Rawson participated in a panel on national pharmacare, while the CHPI’s Brett Skinner spoke on health technology assessments.
In December 2017, the CASHC released a study that claimed lack of access to affordable medicine was more “perception” than reality. The report asserted that less than 0.5% of Canadians are unable to afford their medications due to the cost – a figure that has not been reproduced by any study before or since. The report was funded by both Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC) and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA). Its introductory note explains that the research was overseen by an “expert advisory committee” composed of two IMC and two CLHIA representatives.
When the Trudeau government announced the creation of an expert panel on pharmacare (the Advisory Council on Implementing National Pharmacare) in April 2018, the Conference Board’s CASHC responded by launching the National Pharmacare Initiative. The Initiative’s stated aims were to “inform the national pharmacare debate in Canada” and “create a neutral forum for thought leaders and stakeholders to discuss the issues.” But the makeup of the Steering Committee piloting the initiative was anything but neutral.
The 20-person committee included the CEOs of both major industry lobby groups opposed to single-payer pharmacare, Innovative Medicines Canada, and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association, and was chaired by former Alberta health minister-turned-pharma lobbyist Fred Horne. In total, 13 of the 20 committee members were lobbyists or top executives from pharma and insurance companies, or from patient and pharmacist groups that receive pharma funding.
Unsurprisingly, the Conference Board’s National Pharmacare Initiative sought to convince the Advisory Council that a new pharmacare program should steer clear of single-payer pharmacare and “build or improve upon what exists,” namely “the current infrastructure of public programs and private plans.” In its final report, the Conference Board recognized high levels of popular support for public, single-payer pharmacare, but warned that “comprehensive public coverage would likely be subject to significant opposition from major stakeholders, including private insurers, and the brand-name pharmaceutical industry.”
Nikolas Barry-Shaw
Nikolas is the Trade and Privatization Campaigner for the Council of Canadians and author of the book “Paved with Good Intentions.”
