What are other provinces doing to deal with growing drug costs?
Drug pricing is changing in Canada. British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario have recently announced changes to the way generic drugs will be priced in their provinces. In Canada, the prices of generic drugs are set based on a percentage of the cost of the equivalent brand drug. Generic drugs become available after the patents of brand drugs expire. In the past, generic drugs have tended to be priced at 50 to 70% of the price of the brand price in Canada. In April, 2010, Ontario announced that it intends to set the price of generic drugs for both public and private drug plans at 25% of the price of the equivalent brand drug. In July, British Columbia announced that it plans to set the price it pays for generic drugs at 35% of the price of the brand drug. Alberta announced, in October 2009, that the price for any new generic drugs would be set at 45% of the equivalent brand drug. In January 2010, they announced that the price of already listed generic drugs would be set at 56% of the equiv
