Man who set himself on fire outside Trump trial dies of injuries, police say
A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said.
Overall health-care costs could be reduced in Canada by providing free prescription drugs to patients, according to a new study.
Led by a researcher from the University of Toronto's medical school, the three-year study aimed to see how eliminating out-of-pocket medication fees would impact health-care system spending, particularly for patients who reported delaying or not taking prescription drugs due to costs.
"There are millions of Canadians who report not taking medications because of the costs," lead author and University of Toronto associate professor Dr. Nav Persaud told CTVNews.ca. "We were trying to measure the effects of providing people with free access to medicines, as would happen in a national pharmacare program."
The study tracked 786 adult patients at nine primary care sites in Ontario who were taking 128 different essential medicines that covered everything from diabetes to depression. In addition to prescriptions, total health-care cost calculations included emergency room trips, hospitalizations, home care, and visits with doctors and specialists.
Over three years, the study found that mean total health-care spending was reduced by $4,465 per patient, or $1,488 per person per year.
"If you multiply that out over the population, the savings would be much more than $1 billion annually in Canada, because there are estimates between two and four million people are not taking medications because of the cost," Persaud, who is also the Canada Research Chair in Health Justice and a staff physician and scientist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, said.
Hospitalizations and intensive care unit stays represented the largest costs in the study.
"You could imagine patients who are better able to access their asthma or [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] treatments being less likely to go to the emergency department or get admitted to the hospital," Persaud explained. "Then there could be more extreme cases, like someone with type one diabetes who's dependent on insulin: they might be admitted to the hospital ICU, that stay might cost $10,000, and then they get discharged with a box of insulin, but it only lasts a month or so, and then they land back in the hospital or the ICU."
The peer-reviewed study was published Friday by the Journal of the American Medical Association's Health Forum.
"These findings suggest that eliminating out-of-pocket medication costs for patients could reduce overall costs of health care," the study concluded. "This randomized clinical trial of an intervention has clear policy implications, and it provides information about total health care costs using routinely collected administrative data."
Canada is the only country in the world that has a universal health-care system without universal coverage for prescription drugs. Known as pharmacare, such systems pay for or subsidize prescription drug purchases. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party included universal pharmacare in their 2019 federal election platform, they have yet to fully act on the campaign promise.
Trudeau, who currently fronts a minority government, has been relying on NDP support to pass key legislation in what's known as a confidence-and-supply agreement. One of the NDP's conditions for that March 2022 agreement was the introduction of a legislative framework for pharmacare by the end of 2023. There was, however, no mention of pharmacare in the Liberals' 2023 federal budget, which was released in March.
"What we were able to force the government to do is what we could negotiate," federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said at the time. "The Liberals don't seem to be as committed."
Persaud says while benefits to the health-care system are supported by a "mountain of evidence," pharmacare should also be viewed as "a human right."
"People who can't afford lifesaving treatments are going to bed tonight without these medications," Persaud said. "I think the main reason is lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry and the private insurance industry. For them, every dollar that pharmacare saves is a dollar less in revenue."
A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said.
One day after a Montreal police officer fired gunshots at a suspect in a stolen vehicle, senior officers were telling parliamentarians that organized crime groups are recruiting people as young as 15 in the city to steal cars so that they can be shipped overseas.
A rescue operation for an orca calf trapped in a remote tidal lagoon off Vancouver Island has been put on hold after it started eating seal meat thrown in the water for what is believed to be the first time.
Michael Gordon Jackson, a Saskatchewan man accused of abducting his daughter to prevent her from getting a COVID-19 vaccine, has been found guilty for contravention of a custody order.
Soulful gospel artist Mandisa, a Grammy-winning singer who got her start as a contestant on 'American Idol' in 2006, has died, according to a statement on her verified social media. She was 47.
Scottish comedian Samantha Hannah was working on a comedy show about finding a husband when Toby Hunter came into her life. What happened next surprised them both.
In a first-of-its-kind ruling, a B.C. judge has awarded a former couple joint custody of their dog.
Saskatoon police say they will begin searching the city’s landfill for the remains of Mackenzie Lee Trottier, who has been missing for more than three years.
In a climate of social media-endorsed wellness rituals, plunging into cold water has promised to aid muscle recovery, enhance mental health and support immune system function. But the evidence of such benefits sits on thin ice, according to researchers.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.