June 12 marked the release of the Final Report of the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare. The Council recommended that Canada adopt universal, single-payer pharmacare, and set out a plan for how to go about it.

Currently, Canada is an outlier: we have among the highest per capita pharmaceutical spending in the world, and are the only OECD country to have universal health insurance without drug coverage. We know the issues, and we’ve been debating them since the dawn of Canadian medicare. So why hasn’t there been more movement on this file?

The IRPP’s own Colin Busby, who heads up the Faces of Aging research program, joins the podcast to discuss the history of pharmacare in Canada and the hurdles to implementation. For a summary of some of his main points, check out his piece for Policy Options.