People like to talk about how much cheaper drugs are in Canada, where the government keeps a lid on prices. But look a little closer, and you see a country struggling with drug-cost problems that sound pretty familiar.
Especially vexing are drugs for rare diseases. Because the medicines have such a small market, the price per patient is high — hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases.
A drug called Elaprase, approved for a rare genetic disorder called Hunter Syndrome, costs roughly $400,000 a year in Canada, the Globe and Mail reports. Provincial governments in British Columbia and Alberta fund the Shire drug for patients who need it, but the government in Ontario doesn’t.
A member of Canada’s national parliament is introducing a bill today that could create a pool of funding and standardize the country’s approach to orphan drugs, the article says. That might even things out a bit in Canada, but it won’t answer the toughest questions over how helpful and how well proven a drug has to be to merit a six-figure annual price tag.
An Ontario Health Ministry spokesman pointed out that a national drug review group concluded that the drug, which eases symptoms but doesn’t cure the disease, hasn’t been shown to help patients enough to merit the astronomical price. In an email to the Globe and Mail, the spokesman noted that the government has limited funds to pay for all treatments, and “in the case of Elaprase, there is insufficient evidence and large gaps in information.”