Nova Scotia Government Implements Final Phase of Generic Price Reductions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The price of most generic drugs under Nova Scotia's Pharmacare Programs is now capped at 35% of the brand price, after the province implemented the final phase of its “Fair Drug Prices Plan” on August 1, 2012. The first generic pricing reduction to 45% came on July 1, 2011, followed by a second reduction to 40% on January 1 of this year. Nova Scotians covered by private plans or paying for their own prescriptions will pay the same price as those covered by Pharmacare. The Nova Scotia Ministry of Health and Wellness is on track to reduce drug spending by $7 million a year, according to a July 26 news release. “Before bringing in fair drug prices, spending on prescription drugs had almost doubled in the past 8 years. We needed to keep this spending in check,” said the minister, David Wilson, in the release. Meanwhile, pharmacists in the province continue to experience pressures from the price reductions that began a year ago, says Allison Bodnar, executive director of the Pharmacy Association of Nova Scotia (PANS) — pressures that will intensify as the final phase of the government's plan takes effect. “There are some large-volume molecules that hadn't previously declined in price that are taking a big drop this time,” she says. These include omeprazole, used to treat peptic ulcers. “Things are just getting tighter and tighter for pharmacies,” adds Ms. Bodnar. “We are seeing the effects of the policy; there have been a couple of pharmacy closures in Nova Scotia and there have been reduced hours. We are seeing an oversupply of pharmacists now.” Last year, PANS and the provincial government signed a new tariff agreement covering services to Pharmacare recipients. The agreement — which runs until 2014 — did provide a small increase in dispensing fees, as well as new funding for medication reviews, prescription adaptation and therapeutic substitution. The association, however, says the additional compensation isn't enough to offset the losses to pharmacy revenue from the generic price cuts. Pharmacists are currently waiting for the government to unveil regulatory authority — and an associated funding formula — for pharmacists to administer injections. Meanwhile, says Ms. Bodnar, many pharmacists in the province are looking for ways to exercise their expanded scope of practice, even if the service isn't currently funded. “Patients are willing to pay for services such as prescribing for minor ailments,” she says. “The public is ready and people will pay for convenience. And by increasing awareness of the value, we expect that will increase the demand by the public on government to fund such services.”
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.025 | 0.009 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".