Professor & Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy & Systems Design, University of Toronto, Canada.
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Distinguished Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, 14 Queen's Park Cres. W., 3rd Floor, Toronto, ON, CanadaM5S 3K9.
Health Econ Policy Law. 2021 Jul;16(3):371-377. doi: 10.1017/S1744133121000062. Epub 2021 Feb 8.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has shifted the health policy debate in Canada. While the pre-pandemic focus of policy experts and government reports was on the question of whether to add outpatient pharmaceuticals to universal health coverage, the clustering of pandemic deaths in long-term care facilities has spurred calls for federal standards in long-term care (LTC) and its possible inclusion in universal health coverage. This has led to the probability that the federal government will attempt to expand medicare as Canadians have known it for the first time in over a half century. However, these efforts are likely to fail if the federal government relies on the shared-cost federalism that marked the earlier introduction of medicare. Two alternative pathways are suggested, one for LTC and one for pharmaceuticals, that are more likely to succeed given the state of the Canadian federation in the early 21st century.
2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行改变了加拿大的卫生政策辩论。虽然政策专家和政府报告在大流行前的重点是是否将门诊药品纳入全民医疗保险，但大流行死亡病例在长期护理机构的聚集促使人们呼吁制定长期护理（LTC）的联邦标准，并将其可能纳入全民医疗保险。这导致联邦政府有可能首次在半个多世纪以来扩大医疗保险，这是加拿大人所熟知的。然而，如果联邦政府依赖于标志着早期引入医疗保险的共同成本联邦制，这些努力很可能会失败。鉴于 21 世纪初加拿大联邦的状况，提出了两种替代途径，一种用于长期护理，一种用于药品，这两种途径更有可能成功。
