British Expats - Moving back to UK from Canada

Quote:

Originally Posted by feelbritish (Post 12484929)

Having retired here in UK from Canada I will second that! We would have struggled financially and always worried if one of us needed expensive cancer drugs as we had heard horror stories of people selling their houses. My husband worked with two chaps who had to do this when their wives got cancer!

I do wonder if this is either overplayed by the insurance companies or whether the lack of publicity regarding "catastrophic drug costs" means people don't know what is available.

When I was first in Canada, there was a commercial on TV from an insurance company. It featured a woman sitting on a sofa in an empty room, the implication being all the contents had been sold and the house was next to pay for the treatment for her husband.

Every province in Canada has some kind of system in place that limits what people have to pay for prescription drugs. The trouble is that people seem to view it as a system for low income folk and "it doesn't apply to them".

Now, while it's true that it helps people on low incomes afford moderate drugs costs, it does so because their income isn't enough. But income not being enough may apply to anyone if the costs of meds are high. If you need expensive drugs - really expensive drugs - even a high income may not be enough, so you may still qualify.

Different provinces do it different ways but in Ontario for example, something like 5% of your income (and that's net) is your maximum co-payment.

So you could be earning $100k, with $72k after tax and your co-payment would be $3600 a year, or $300 a month.

That would mean even someone on $100k, say with diabetes, taking insulin, and with high blood pressure would likely qualify for some assistance if the costs of those meds were more than $300. Of course, with a salary like that the chances are their employee health benefits would be adequate anyway.

In a different province my late wife needed Remicade infusions @ $7000 a time every 6 weeks. And that was fully covered by New Brunswick's version.

It may well be that there are particular cancer (or other) treatments that are not funded, just as there are those the NHS won't cover either.