Healthier pill popping

DRUG BUST
Alan Cassels

SURELY OUR economic calamity couldn’t have any positive health effects, could it?

As people lose their jobs and watch their assets, retirement savings and homes diminish in value, one might assume that it inevitably means a big negative on the balance sheets of our lives.

Not so fast, I say. Among the pharmaceutical-popping public, recessionary times may indeed have a silver lining. In fact, this recession may be good for both our health and our pocketbooks, especially if it forces us to reassess our frequently thoughtless, overzealous and often un-economical, legal drug habit.

You have to admit that we have been somewhat conditioned by the media to believe that spending less on healthcare means rationing, longer waits and less access to health services. But can throwing less money at the pharmaceutical industry translate into better access and shorter wait times for things that actually count? It could, but I admit such heretical thoughts are based on my perspective that pharmaceuticals really do reside in a special place inside the healthcare world.

For each drug on the market that is truly lifesaving, providing profound benefits and extending the quality and length of our lives, dozens more either don’t deliver the goods or worse, provide the opposite – more harm than benefit. And the money we’re spending on those treatments could be buying less health.

Suffice to say, one of the side effects of these belt-tightening times could be that we spend more energy figuring out what is really essential for people who are truly sick and then making sure the system doesn’t reward prescribing what is unnecessary or harmful. After all, what better time to eliminate fat than when we are collectively facing lean times?

One clue that there is perhaps too much excess in the world of prescription drugs might be found in the way society pays for pharmaceuticals. In Canada, drug coverage operates by the rule of thirds: about a third of our collective pharmaceutical tab is covered by the public purse (in our case, BC Pharmacare). A third is paid for by your private and typically employer-sponsored health benefit program. And finally, a third is paid for out of your own pocket.