Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians skipping pills, not renewing prescriptions due to cost: poll
Global News
The poll, which surveyed 2,048 adults in Canada, show 22 per cent reported splitting pills, skipping doses or deciding not to fill or renew a prescription due to cost.
Nearly one in four Canadians are struggling to pay for prescription medications and are skipping pills or foregoing refills, a new poll has found.
The poll, commissioned from Leger by Heart and Stroke and the Canadian Cancer Society between Jan. 24-29 found of the 2,048 adults surveyed, 22 per cent reported splitting pills, skipping doses or deciding not to fill or renew a prescription due to cost.
“I think that one of the challenges we have is that we have a universal health-care system, and yet we’re the only country with that universal health-care system that doesn’t have a pharmacare program,” Stuart Edmonds, executive vice-president of mission research and advocacy with the Canadian Cancer Society, said in an interview with Global News.
He said it was “shocking” that the polling found one in 10 Canadians with chronic conditions have ended up in the emergency room due to worsening health because they were unable to afford a prescription.
When a person is diagnosed with cancer or a chronic disease, Edmonds said financial hardship is the “last thing” people want to deal with. He acknowledged that there are still health-care-related costs like travel, parking and even childcare when trying to attend appointments, but a prescription for medication shouldn’t be one of them.
It’s a story 59-year-old Heather Evans of Calgary knows too well.
Since suffering two heart attacks when she was 39, she has been on various medications — taking 23 pills and two needles a day. But before getting her job with Goodlife Fitness in 2010, she struggled to afford medication. With the need to eat healthy food given her heart disease, the cost of food as a single mother was an added financial burden.
“With a heart condition a lot of it is mental, you’re afraid, and you’ve got to kind of plan out things and so you go to sleep at night wondering what’s going to happen to you if you don’t have the medication,” she told Global News.
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