FREDERICTON – The New Brunswick government plans to get rid of a requirement that made prescription drug insurance mandatory.
Health Minister Victor Boudreau introduced amendments Tuesday that would eliminate the requirement that would have taken effect April 1.
He said the catastrophic drug plan introduced last year by former Health Minister Ted Flemming goes too far.
The first phase of the program is voluntary, but by April 2015, buying into the insurance plan would be mandatory. Premiums range from $600 to $2,000, depending on income level.
Boudreau said it is too much to make New Brunswickers pay. His amendments scrap the mandatory second phase and call for a comprehensive review.
Boudreau added two new premium levels for low-income earners. People who opt in can now pay as little as $200 per year if they earn less than $17,884.
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He said the plan wasn’t serving the people it should have been.
“We were being told that this plan was there to address the need of 150,000 New Brunswickers without drug coverage,” he said. “Today, only 2,400 people have taken the program up, so obviously, that’s a pretty clear indication to me that the program is not meeting the needs of what it set out to.”
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Flemming, who is now the official opposition critic to the drug plan, said the government is twisting the facts.
“We always said that Phase 2 would have subsidies,” he said. “To parade somebody out who’s on minimum wage saying ‘I can’t afford this,’ … that person never would have paid.”
Flemming said a mandatory program is the only way to keep things affordable.
He said the Liberals have turned an insurance plan into a social program.
“The problem with policies like this is the same old problem that Liberals have had over and over and over again,” he said. “It sounds good going in, but at the end of the day, they ultimately run out of someone else’s money.”
With files from The Canadian Press
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