Nova Scotia seniors group hopeful pharmacare premium hikes will be less drastic

Nova Scotia's deputy minister for seniors says there are options to mitigate some of the proposed changes to theseniorspharmacare program and the province will soon make a decision onadjustments.

The Nova Scotia government is open to making changesand will announce them within a few days, Simond'Entremontsaid Wednesday.

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"The government has signaled recently that we are very open to the advice of the seniors' advisory council and we are ready to make the changes needed to accommodate as much of their advice as possible," he said.

D'Entremont had just finished meeting with Bill Berryman, chair of the Seniors' Advisory Council for Nova Scotia. It's the second time this month representatives of seniors and government have met about the controversial program.

While neither side was willing to release details about today's discussions, the three main issues continue tobe:

• The increase in pharmacare premiums to a maximum of $1,200 from the current $424.
• The difference in costs to single seniors and couples.
• Lack of communication regarding the pace and scale of the changes.

Seniors are hopeful

While some of the 120,000 seniors enrolled will pay more under changes announced last month, the government has said most will pay the same or less.

Seniors are worried about the sustainability of the program, but significant premium hikes for higher-income program users will be a burden, Berryman said.

"That is one of the mainconcerns that we heard from our members and from other seniors in the province and we're hopeful that government will make some changes on that particular issue."

The deputy minister said the issues that have been raised were discussed at Wednesday's meeting, as were the options.

"We provided our seniors' advisory council with our feedback on those issues today and got their feedback on our analysis to determine what's the best way forward for us," he said.

He said the government has "a self-imposed deadline" to come up with a final word.

"Timeliness is quite important right now because April 1 is a significant milestone in the program in terms of trying to implement any changes for the program and we do need to get information out to seniors in advance of that."