Drugs are super expensive in Canada according to a new study.
The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday by a team of Canadian and American researchers found that overall, Canadians are paying far more for primary care prescription drugs than people who live in most other high-income countries with universal healthcare.
The volume and daily cost of primary care prescription here were compared with nine other high-income countries including: Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
All of these countries, except Canada, offer universal coverage for outpatient prescriptions. Their average per-person cost of prescription medication was $122 in 2015. In Canada, it was $158.
At $171, only the Swiss paid more per capita for primary care prescriptions.
Researchers based their findings on studying the prices of six types of commonly purchased primary care prescriptions. They also found that drug costs can vary by more than 600 per cent in these ten countries.
Other points of interest in the study is that it was found Canadians purchase about the same amount of therapy as the other countries, but, with the cost difference mentioned above, we spent about $2.3 billion more in 2015 than if these primary care treatments had had the same average cost per day as in the 9 comparator countries combined.
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