Canada's health care faces reform

With the appointment of the former Health Minister for the Canadian province of Ontario, Tony Clement, to the position of federal Minister for Health in the new Conser-vative government, critics of Canada's publicly-funded health care system sense an opportunity for change. Brett Skinner, Director of Health and Pharmaceutical Policy Research at the Vancouver, Canada-based Fraser Institute, has presented a shopping list of reforms from the free-market oriented think-tank. He warns that allowing Cana-dian Internet pharmacists to export drugs to the USA (Marketletters passim) runs the risk of causing shortages in Canada, given the size of the US market, a problem that will get worse if more US citizens buy Canadian.

Writing in the Canadian daily newspaper the National Post, Mr Skinner says: "the number of American consumers who would be legally eligible to buy cross-border drugs under these proposals is conservatively estimated to be almost 119 million, or nearly four times Canada's entire population of approximately 32 million."

Price control = profits for Internet pharmacists