Minorities less likely to have access to drug plans compared with Canada-born citizens: StatCan
Many Canadians need prescription drugs, and most workers have access to employer-provided benefits that allow them to get their hands on these medicines, according to a Statistics Canada (StatCan) report.
Overall, in 2021, 67% of Canadians reported taking or being prescribed a medication in the last 12 months.
The rate of medication use was higher for women (73%), compared with men (60%), and for those aged 65 years and older (86%), compared with those aged 18 to 24 years. (47%).
As Canada remains the only country that offers universal health care without universal coverage for prescription drugs, 7.5 million Canadians – or one in five – remain uninsured and pay out-of-pocket for prescription medications, said StatCan.
Drug insurance coverage
One good thing is that in 2019, eight in 10 Canadian men (79.5%) and women (80.3%) were covered by at least one type of drug insurance.
Among age groups, men (62.2%) and women (63.5%) aged 25 to 64 are far more likely to have such a coverage compared with those aged 12 to 24 (53.4% of men and 55.6% of women) and those aged 65 and up (26.5% of men and 23.5% of women).
“Pharmaceutical access is an essential part of the health care system that helps Canadians achieve optimal health,” said Fei-Ju Yang, analyst with the Centre for Health Data Integration, and Shikha Gupta, analyst with the Centre for Population Health Data, both at Statistics Canada. “Inadequate pharmaceutical access can reduce Canadians’ quality of life by creating unmet health needs and increasing cost-related medication non-adherence.”
Speciality drug prescriptions is one factor pushing health-care costs up for employers, according to a previous report.
Difference in access among racialized groups
However, racialized groups in Canada are less likely than natural-born citizens to have access to employer-sponsored plans that cover prescription drugs, according to StatCan’s report titled Study: Gaps in prescription insurance coverage, based on data from the Canadian Community Health Survey 2015, 2016 and 2019.
Non-racialized men (55.6%) and women (55.5%) are more likely to have access to these plans compared with the following groups:
|
Racialized groups |
Percentage among men |
Percentage among women |
|---|---|---|
|
South Asian |
51.7% |
52.6% |
|
Black |
50.1% |
47.1% |
|
Chinese |
43.9% |
44.9% |
|
Other racialized groups |
50.6% |
50.8% |
Having a drug insurance plan is “an important pathway to pharmaceutical access,” but having coverage does not imply “having adequate coverage,” said Yang and Gupta.
“Many people who have access to a drug insurance plan may not be able to afford medications because of their incapacity to bear out-of-pocket costs in the form of co-payments and deductibles. As an example, this study highlighted that having a drug insurance plan does not fully protect individuals from rationing behaviours, especially insured women who were more likely than insured men to skip filling prescription drugs.”
Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in Canada have shifted to working in low-paying jobs in the country in the previous decade, according to a previous report from StatCan.