Should Canadians lose the home to cancer drugs?

This issue hasn’t come up for much debate by Canada’s politicians. The problem recently written about in Reader’s Digest involves a woman in Ontario dying after the provincial government in effect disallowed funding for a needed cancer drug. The reason, although not pointed out in the article, was probably that the family owned home if sold could pay the cost of the lifesaving treatment.

There are likely two trains of thoughts on the situation. People with sufficiently large savings and employment retirement insurance policies would say the government is right denying the drug until the money realized from selling the house is exhausted. Those retirees owning a home and living on the edge or below the poverty level would believe Canada’s world-renowned healthcare system should pay for the drugs. The reason being that keeping the house would eventually mean a spouse and family members could benefit financially from the property sale.

Most elected politicians with better than average income levels and gold plated retirement benefits will probably be on the side of having the cancer victim’s family sell the asset and pay for the drug. However, that more or less selfish thinking might change once baby boomers without company pensions and facing the same dilemma consider voting against members of any party supporting using the sale of family homes to pay for medical expenses. If readers think gun registry split the country between rural and city dwellers wait until the drug payment issue divides the electorate with savings from those living at the poverty level.

The solution is obvious. Canada should simply use some of the multi-billion dollars now supporting health care to fund needed drugs for Canadians that do not have private health care coverage. To accomplish the shift in funding there would have to be spending cuts and changes in the cost of developing architecturally designed state-of-the-art facilities considered elaborately essential. Fewer well paid non-medical employees and severely reducing the payment to highly overpaid managers and administrators would be a good place to start. Renegotiating union contracts with the same vision for reducing costs that foreign owned companies buying Canada’s industries are using to decimate the terms and conditions won over the years by powerful foreign-based unions would need consideration by over expensed hospital boards.

The difference must come from the healthcare system when renegotiated benefit packages reducing the amount of drug coverage allowed retirees that worked long years for large corporations becomes a factor. Since it isn’t the fault of the family that the drugs are suddenly unaffordable, forcing the surviving spouse out of the family home should not become a Canadian tradition.

Changes are inevitable since the 2008 collapse of the North American financial system that is just now beginning to show signs of a shaky recovery. It is unrealistic to believe a country as small, and rich in resources, going at bargain prices to large foreign interests, will continue to weather the storm. Let’s hope our leaders are more far-sighted than the political games currently taking place in parliament and supported by a sensational seeking media.