RIVERVIEW, N.B. – A New Brunswick man is advocating for a provincial catastrophic drug plan after promising his late wife he would.
Robert MacDonald’s wife Marion passed away in May after a three-year battle with brain cancer. Together, he said, they tried to fight the cancer, and the government.
“Dealing with that is enough without dealing with the financial end of it. Your plate is full already,” he said.
New Brunswick will be the last province to install a catastrophic drug plan, which covers the cost of expensive, life-saving drugs.
In the MacDonalds’ case, they had drug coverage, but it did not cover Tebodal, the drug Marion needed. It cost about $2,600 per month, and they spent about $35,000 on the drug, even with financial help from the drug company.
In a letter MacDonald wrote to the Liberal party that was read in the Legislature last year, he pleaded with the government to create a catastrophic drug plan sooner rather than later.
“We are not asking for absolute charity, but a plan that’s fair to all,” it read. “The clock is ticking.”
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In an interview with Global News in December 2012, the MacDonalds described having to fight two battles: one to conquer cancer and the other to get a drug plan in place.
“I always said if you said you’ll do something, then do it,” Marion said at the time.
MacDonald said he voted for the Conservatives in the 2010 election because they promised him a plan would be in place during the first year of their mandate. But Premier David Alward said in last week’s throne speech the plan will come in summer 2014.
“What I feel good about is that we will be coming forward with it,” Alward said. “Again, it’s taken time and I fully recognize that, and people will hold us to account for that.”
“Maybe I’m naive to think that it was going to happen that way, but I actually did believe that what they were telling me in September 2010 was actually going to happen,” MacDonald said.
The Conservatives have said they’re working towards a better universal drug plan.
“I’m not going to bankrupt the province, I’m going to do this right,” said Ted Flemming, the New Brunswick health minister, in a February 2013 interview. “There is a right way to do this, and I’m far more interested in doing this right than doing this fast.”
But MacDonald said he wishes they had acted faster, so he would have been able to spend Marion’s last three years worrying less about how much it cost to keep her alive and more about being alive.
MacDonald’s letter is going to be re-read in the legislature Tuesday, but with an addition.
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