OHIP+ fears unfounded

Re: Why privatizing drug coverage is bad for Ontario — July 9

Estimates say that before OHIP+ was introduced, 40 to 65 per cent of Ontarians were already insured for health benefits through their employer — more often than not including coverage for prescription drugs. Enter the Ontario Liberals who apparently thought they hadn’t found enough ways to waste government revenues already.

At the start of the year, they began paying the entire cost of prescription drugs for anyone under 25. Here is the problem: about half of those costs would have already been covered by insurance, for which premiums are still being paid.

We now have a system in which many Ontarians are paying for coverage they can’t use because the government assumed the cost of prescription drugs ahead of their insurer.

This is why the claims made by University of British Columbia Prof. Steve Morgan are so outrageous. He claims that it will somehow cost more for people to bill their insurance first (for something they’re already covered for).

Right now, they’re being double billed while the government is effectively subsidizing the insurance industry.

He invents the notion that insurance premiums are going to increase (they’re not; their coverage isn’t changing) and erroneously assumes that employers will be forced to introduce or expand health coverage plans to include pharmacare.

The news release from the PC government clearly says that those without coverage will continue to receive their prescriptions for free; those with coverage will bill the insurer first and the government for the remainder.

Nowhere does it so much as imply any new obligation to acquire or extend coverage for prescription drugs. Neither does it suggest any future plans to change existing pharmacare programs.

Seniors, you have nothing to worry about.

Kevin Rombout

Waterloo