Friends of Medicare executive director Chris Gallaway speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about changes to COVID-19 vaccine policies. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Michael Higgins: Let’s start on changes to COVID-19 vaccine coverage. It will still be free to seniors in communal living and those with underlying health conditions, but where do you feel this leaves the remainder of Albertans? Chris Gallaway: What we’re seeing is the exact opposite of what would be a good public health approach. We’re not totally surprised, given that the government released the report on the pandemic a few months ago. They spent $2 million on that report with a lot of anti-vaccine rhetoric and junk science in it. So to see this now, where people will be paying out of pocket, and it’s not just paying out of pocket but other barriers. You have to pre-order, there’s only certain sites you can go to, you can no longer go to pharmacies. It’s really designed to attack COVID-19 vaccinations, as though they’re something that’s bad, make it harder to get them, and really will lead to more and more people ending up in our hospitals and costing us more money in the long term, rather than paying for the shots up front. MH: The premier on her weekend radio show stated Albertans themselves are choosing not to take it. Should that not help guide the government in making the decision to change policy? CG: We saw, last year, the government cut the immunization campaign spending in half. So it’s no surprise that uptake went down when the advertising and the campaigning to tell people when and how to get the shots was cut in half. Of course, we saw a drop. That’s what happens when you don’t educate people, you don’t make it as easy as possible for folks to book and get the shots when they can get them. Now we’re seeing even more and more barriers, so of course uptake of shots will continue to go down. When you have a government that isn’t encouraging them, that’s making it harder to get them, that’s the result. She created that result, and now is saying that’s justifying her decision. MH: The government’s maybe not encouraging Albertans to get the shot, but no one is telling Albertans not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. CG: No one from the government but obviously if you go online or in other places, there’s a lot of anti-vaccine rhetoric and pushes out there. There’s a lot of uncertainty, which is why we have public health campaigns to tell people that these vaccines are safe, why they should get them, the risks of not getting them, where to get them. That’s why those campaigns exist. We saw that funding slashed so of course we saw uptake go down. Really we should be focused on keeping people out of hospitals, whether it’s measles, COVID-19, the flu, or other vaccines, and we’ve seen all of those things reined in by this government under public health. MH: Where does this policy change leave frontline health workers given the government has indicated they, like most Albertans, will have to pay out of pocket for the shot? CG: In this announcement, they created the narrowest possible definition of who is most at risk. The government has a responsibility to keep health care workers safe at work, and we’ve heard a strong response since last Friday from nurses and other health-care workers saying, ‘What the heck? We should be getting these shots as well. They are part of going to work safely.’ At a time when we have a staffing crisis in health care, something we’ve talked about many times on this show, we should be doing everything we can to make workers feel safe and to retain them and not have them saying, ‘Maybe I should move to another jurisdiction that actually follows science and takes my safety and well being seriously.’ MH: How did you think this policy positions the government for the actual purchase of COVID-19 vaccines? How much of a change is possible there? CG: We’ll have to see how it plays out in terms of this pre-ordering system versus who’s in those high at risk categories that get it for free. We’re not really sure how the rollout will look, how they’ll actually get them in arms, and it’ll be interesting to see the difference between those who try to pre-order and then actually end up getting the shots, and whether there’s barriers to access even once the shots are ordered and sent to Alberta. MH: The decision to charge for COVID-19 immunization comes on the heels of the Smith government moving to increase prescription co-payment costs for some seniors by $10 over 10 months. Where do you weigh in on that as a policy change? What does it speak to for you? CG: It was another quiet change last week that they tried to sneak in, heading into the weekend, which seems to be a pattern with the government. But it’s a bigger pattern. We had the premier run on a public health guarantee. She promised she would not delist services and that Albertans would not have to pay out of pocket. We’ve seen continuing care fees go up. We’ve seen the COVID-19 vaccination fees. They delisted eye exams and other vision care, and now they’re raising drug costs for seniors and others on group plans that will be impacted by this policy change. So it’s over and over again. $10 here, $100 there, adding up where Albertans are paying over and over to access the health care that they need, when the premier explicitly promised that’s not what she would do when in power. MH: What kind of impact do you expect this co-payment increase to have? CG: We know what happens. There’s been lots of studies on PharmaCare and drug coverage, given the national discussions on when folks don’t take the drugs they need. When they’re struggling with affordability, they skip doses, they cut pills, they cut corners to try to get by. Which means they get sicker, their conditions get worse, or they end up in our hospitals, costing us more. There’s endless evidence to show that covering pharmaceuticals reduces our health care costs on the health care system by keeping people safe and healthy with their conditions, and right now, there’s a national PharmaCare plan that Alberta refuses to join that could bring the cost of diabetes medication down to zero. They would cover insulin and devices through that national plan. Alberta has said, ‘No,’ for no reason other than they don’t want to work with the federal government. MH: Is the national PharmaCare plan the straightforward answer? Because the government points to drug prices going up, population growth, aging population, as rationale for hiking this co-payment. Whose shoulders should covering the cost increases fall to? CG: Absolutely the easiest and best solution would be a national plan that covers medications. We would save a whole bunch of money, billions of dollars per year, just on the bulk purchasing, let alone other savings. We also know covering medication saves money in the health-care system by raising the co-pays, even up to $2 of co-pay increases can lead to folks not taking their medications as prescribed. So we’re actually costing ourselves money. They’re claiming short-term savings on the drug plan, but it’s going to show up in our ambulances or emergency rooms or hospitals with worsening chronic conditions. So we won’t save any money. We’ll save money on one budget line while costing us a lot more down the road with those downstream costs.
