The Canada Health Act, a framework to the Canadian Health System, covers medically necessary hospital, physician and limited long-term services but not prescription medications (Dewa, Hotch, & Steele, 2005). Countries similar to Canada in terms of the economy like Australia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have universal coverage of prescription medications while Canada does not provide such coverage (Squires, 2011). Prescription medications in Canada are paid for by the government drug plans, employer/ private insurance plans, and/or out-of-pocket as described here:
(a) Federal drug benefit programs: The federal government provides coverage to certain Canadians who are members of the eligible groups. Eligible groups include First Nations and Inuit, members of Canadian Armed forces, qualified veterans by Veteran Affairs Canada, and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. These plans cover around one million individuals across Canada (Government of Canada, 2017).
(b) Provincial drug benefit plans: All provinces provide drug benefits to their eligible and uninsured residents for the eligible drugs. Overall, there are more than 100 public drug plans in Canada that fund around 42% of total pharmaceutical costs (Brandt, Shearer, & Morgan, 2018). To partially cover the cost for medications, all provinces use a combination of cost-sharing mechanisms such as premiums, copayments, co-insurance and deductibles. These terms are described in Table 1 (Demers et al., 2008).
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