Sante Publique
-
Based exclusively on drugs approved by provincial public health insurance systems, many authors have reported significant variability in terms of access to anticancer drugs (ACD) among Canadian citizens, raising problems of equal access to these drugs. In this paper, we emphasize that the mere presence on the list of public drug plans cannot be considered to be a sufficient indicator to determine the real availability of anticancer drugs (ACD) for the patient. ⋯ The term regulator comprises the conditions which must be observed for access via the public health insurance system as well as the rules (strategies) decided by the third-party payer for the management of these conditions. The results of our analyses lead to the conclusion that there is indeed a variation between provinces in terms of access to drugs financed by public funds, but that this variability primarily impacts less important treatments.