What is the Trillium Drug Program?
If an individual or family in Ontario spends a large part of their income on prescription drugs, the Trillium Drug Program (TDP) can help cover the cost. After they spend a certain amount (the deductible) on prescription drugs each year, they will be eligible for Ontario Drug Benefits.
The deductible is the amount an individual or family must spend on prescription drugs before they can receive Ontario Drug Benefits. It is based on the number of people in their family (same sex partners are consider family for the purpose of the TDP) and their family's net income. The TDP has been in existence for 2 years.
What is AAN's History on this issue?
In the early 1990s AAN! lobbied the provincial government to create a program to cover the drug costs of working people who were neither on social assistance, and thus eligible for Ontario Drug Benefits, nor receiving full drug coverage as part of a benefits package where they worked.
People with no, or incomplete, drug benefits through their employer were being forced to quit their jobs and go on social assistance in order to cover the prohibitive costs of their prescription drugs.
AAN!'s lobbying efforts finally resulted in TDP being launched in early 1995. Many changes to the TDP have taken place as a result of AAN's lobbying efforts directed at bureaucrats in the Drug Programs Branch, Ontario Ministry of Health/Ministere de la Sante de l'Ontario. We are presently engaged in a campaign to pressure the government to reform the TDP.
What are the issues? AAN's Policy?
Three reforms of the TDP are required:
- Eliminate the deductible for single low-income earners (gross income less than $11,160 per annum) and families living below the poverty line as defined by Statistics Canada;
- Spread the deductible payments throughout the year; and
- Pro-rate the deductible payments so that applicants who apply to the TDP after the yearly starting date (April 1st) will not be penalized and have to pay the entire deductible. Alternatively, the deductible could cover any twelve month period rather than just the April 1 to March 31 period as is presently stipulated.