What happened?

Everything seemed to be going so well...

The government was finally going to recognize and utilize pharmacists to their full potential. They recognized us as the medication experts and were finally going to allow us to use the full extent of our training to improve the health of our patients. Bill 179 was the first step to realizing our full potential as a profession. It was the chance to finally see our profession advance to the levels we had talked about back when I was in pharmacy school. Sure there were still a few details to be worked out, but we were really on the right track. Pharmacy was ready to take that next leap...

What happened??

There were rumblings last summer that something was amiss with King Dalton and his Liberals. They were looking to balance their books and decided that cutting healthcare was the best way to do it. Pharmacy seemed like a good place to start. They released an outrageous proposal as a starting point for “discussions” with our profession. At the time my thoughts were that they were simply using this tactic to get our attention- that they were letting us know how “bad” it could be, hoping that we would swallow their “real” proposal more easily knowing that it could have been much worse.

We played along through the “discussion” period- presenting proposals to the government that would save money and still preserve the level of care our patients were used to receiving. We endured the meetings being cancelled, and then cancelled again and finally decided that we had enough. We were going to start talking to our patients about the plans the Liberals had in store for us. Then the government started to worry- they didn’t want us talking about their precious bill until the time was right. They agreed to resume “discussions” but only as long as we didn’t talk about it to anyone. Pharmacists, being the trusting souls we are, agreed to return to the table, hoping that some common sense finally was starting to filter through Queen’s Park.

Unfortunately, nine months later, the baby that the Liberal’s delivered was just as ugly as the one they talked about when the idea was first conceived. Only this time, the government was prepared...

I never imagined it would come to this...our profession under attack by the very people we elected to run our great province. I never imagined I would be the victim of a smear job by the Minister of Health who has attempted every trick in the book to discredit and demonize a profession with a proud history.

I learned from the Minister of Health that I have been taking “kickbacks” for years while gouging the public. I learned that the price of a drug that might be used for blood pressure was 5 times more expensive here than in New Zealand, and that a diabetes drug was 2 times more than in the US. I learned that the “high price” for a round white tablet was $1.56 while a “fair price” was $0.28. Ontario was paying “too much” for generic drugs and that it is “the right thing to do.” I guess to the Liberal mind, pulling random numbers out of the air and selling them to the public with no context is “the right thing to do.”

I am still hoping that some of that common sense will strike enough Liberal MPP’s to permeate Deb’s thick armour. We didn’t ask for this battle, but we have come together admirably to fight it. We are doing the right thing in defending our profession. Maybe one day we will even be able to get back to real discussions about moving our profession forward. For the time being, we are down to the wire now in the fight of our lives and need to keep pushing....if we lose this one we won’t have a profession left to fight for.