Talking about opting out of pharmacare is ‘premature,’ health minister says

Health Minister Mark Holland says he’s excited about introducing pharmacare legislation, but that some are “jumping the gun” and raising “premature” worries after the NDP announced they have a deal on Friday.

This comes on the heels of the Alberta government saying it already intends to opt out of pharmacare, instead requesting its share of per capita funding in cash.

“Some people are jumping the gun and talking about what that is before it’s completed and that’s creating some confusion. So the first thing I would say is everybody needs to take a pause,” Holland said after the Tuesday cabinet meeting.

“For provinces to say whether or not they’re going to participate in something or not, when they don’t even know what it is, is a little premature.”

On Friday, the NDP said they finalized a deal to legislate the framework for a pharmacare deal would include coverage for contraception and diabetes medication first, and work toward a single-payer system.

A government source confirmed Friday that a deal had been reached, but declined comment on specifics as legislation hasn’t been introduced.

On Sunday, a spokesperson from Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange’s office said Alberta was not consulted on the national pharmacare plan “and there are limitations in the initial analysis and assumptions, including start-up investment and administrative costs to implement a cost-sharing model, that were not taken into consideration that add costs for the provinces.”

Holland says that legislation will be tabled this week, meeting the deadline to get legislation before the House of Commons as outlined in the supply and confidence agreement.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh previously said that if the deadline was missed, he’d consider the agreement