Orwellian “Doublethink” on “Transparency” from Ontario’s Drug Czar

Secret, untendered contracts with the world’s most expensive consultants. Undisclosed backroom deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nasty implications and innuendo planted in the news media. That’s the McGuinty government’s idea of “Transparency”.

And we are NOT even talking about the eHealth or Cancer Care Ontario scandals that have proven beyond a doubt that the McGuinty government has seriously mismanaged our healthcare dollars.

This particular outrage comes courtesy of the Transparent Drug System for Patients Act, a law so poorly thought out that even its name is steeped in hypocrisy.

In 2006, Dalton McGuinty’s government decided to “fix” pharmacy - a part of the health care system that wasn’t broken, but that actually worked, delivering excellent, cost-effective patient care. At the time, the government said they were going to improve drug system “transparency”. Let’s see how that worked out.

In August, we learned that the government was getting hundreds of millions of dollars in secret rebates from drug makers, in return for listing their medicines on the Ontario Drug Benefit formulary.

On October 23^rd, Sun Media reported that the government provided a secret sole-sourced consulting contract for $750,000 to cost-cutting specialists McKinsey and Company, to produce a report on how to cut pharmacy funding - again.

Through the spring, summer and fall, a government official repeatedly fed stories to the news media that had the effect of making pharmacists look greedy and even dangerous.

Who is behind all of these initiatives? Ontario’s Drug Czar: Helen Stevenson, the immensely powerful drug system Executive Officer. The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care official who isn’t accountable to the Deputy Minister, isn’t even accountable to the Minister, but is accountable only to the Lieutenant Governor in Council (the Cabinet).

And what does she have to say about government transparency?

“We are compromising on transparency…”

‘Compromising’, Ms Stevenson? Here’s one definition of “compromise” I found online: A settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.

Major concessions, including financial losses and increased bureaucracy, have been forced upon community pharmacy. What concessions has Ms. Stevenson made?

Ms Stevenson was asked to share with the public the details of the deals she cut with pharmaceutical manufacturers. Her response, according to the National Post: “…the secrecy around price arrangements is unavoidable…”.

And how about that secret, sole-sourced $750,000 report from McKinsey? Will Ms Stevenson share that with the taxpayers who paid for it? No: “…nor would she discuss the recommendations made in the McKinsey and Co. report”.

How’s that for transparent? Here’s another definition of the word “compromise”: A concession to something detrimental or pejorative: e.g. “a compromise of morality”.

What does government transparency really mean in Ontario?

Now we understand the McGuinty government’s bold use (or abuse) of language: We’ll say transparency in government is vital. We’ll title our laws using the word “Transparent”. Then we’ll create unaccountable government positions of unprecedented power, and let officials make secret deals, hand out huge secret contracts and concoct secret plans to cut health care. We’ll forget the Joint Working Group that was created to negotiate, in good faith, a new services and funding model with pharmacy. That’s just to keep the pharmacists busy talking. Patients and pharmacists will never know what hit them.

George Orwell knew what to call this kind of propaganda. In his novel 1984, he coined the term “doublethink”. Government efforts to embrace utter contradiction and hypocrisy that are so strong, the purveyors of the propaganda begin to believe it themselves. To the slogans that include, “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength”, perhaps we can now add “Secrecy is Transparency”.

Another eminent thinker, a contemporary of Orwell’s, had additional insights. He said: “…truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

That was Winston Churchill. But he prefaced that line with the critical qualifier “In wartime…”.

For those of us who appreciate cooperation and fairness, there is no idea more detestable than the declaration of war. But it now appears that the McGuinty government has done just that to pharmacists.

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Note: As previously noted Ms Stevenson likes to talk about needing police protection, and imply that she’s in danger from Ontario pharmacists. That’s clearly not true, but every member of the pharmacy community should make sure that our comments and communications on this situation remain truthful and polite, but firm.

Send a letter (politely but firmly) demanding that the Premier, the government and Helen Stevenson start to negotiate honestly, fully disclose their secret contracts and deals, and treat Ontario pharmacists with the respect we’ve earned and deserve.

Write to Premier McGuinty: http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/feedback/

Write to your MPP:

http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/members/members_current.do?locale=en

Write to Helen Stevenson: Helen.Stevenson@ontario.ca