Layton proposes billion-dollar drug plan
Last Updated: Wednesday, January 4, 2006 | 12:24 PM ET
CBC News
Speaking in Windsor, Ont., Jack Layton said his plan would cover 50 per cent of medically necessary drug costs above $1,500 a year. The plan would cost $1 billion.
"When the cost of prescription drugs threatens to become catastrophic to the family finances this plan will give every Canadian, wherever they live, whatever they have earned or saved, a basic guarantee and a basic level of help and financial security," he said.
Jack Layton, Wednesday.
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The goal of the plan, which Layton said the NDP would introduce in the next Parliament, would be to ensure that no one refuses medically necessary medicine because of cost.
The money would be delivered through a new federal transfer to provinces and territories, he said.
Layton said his plan follows a key recommendation of the Romanow commission on health care.
