That brand was Pariet,which had negotiated a good price for their new drug with PharmaCare based on promised volume of users.
With therapeutic substitution patients are forced to switch from one brand of drug to a different chemical in the same class. Rob Oliphant who was in attendance called this "bureaucratic substitution". At the time he wrote an Op Ed piece for a newspaper stating, among other things, that a decision like this needs public input and that medical guidelines should be built through consensus and with expert input.
This is an interesting idea that looks very attractive to governments which are trying to save money. I hope we don't see it come back as a new light bulb idea idea.
And the results of this money-saving scheme? It took an FOI (freedom of information) request and two years waiting for the de-identified health record information before we saw this study in 2009 titled "Increased health costs from mandated Therapeutic Substitution of proton pump inhibitors in British Columbia"
Healthcare spending for drug expenses, extra physician services and additional hospital services was 43.51 million dollars Canadian. This does not include the pain, inconvenience and suffering of the patients who bore the brunt of this policy.
