TORONTO — Refugees now should pay out of pocket for a part of their drug prescriptions, psychological well being counselling, dental providers, imaginative and prescient care and well being tools — together with wheelchairs — as adjustments to a federal program take impact.
For many years, Canada’s Interim Federal Well being Program has offered full well being protection to refugees and refugee claimants till they’re eligible for provincial well being plans and advantages.
However beginning Friday, they have to pay $4 for each prescription and 30 per cent of the price of supplemental well being services and products.
Greater than a dozen medical, nursing, social work and refugee organizations, together with the Canadian Medical Affiliation, the Canadian Paediatric Society, the Canadian Psychiatric Affiliation and the Canadian Nurses Affiliation, have warned that refugees can’t afford these co-payments and their bodily and psychological well being will undergo.
Additionally they say the adjustments will find yourself costing the health-care system as individuals who can’t afford their medicine or psychological well being providers will deteriorate and find yourself in emergency departments.
The Interim Federal Well being Program will proceed to pay the complete value of physician’s appointments and hospital visits for refugees and refugee claimants.
Dr. Vanessa Redditt, a household doctor at Ladies’s School Hospital’s refugee clinic in Toronto, stated refugees are already dwelling in poverty and making the co-payments will likely be inconceivable for a lot of.
“It’s a denial of care,” stated Redditt, who can be a founding member of the Canadian Refugee Well being Community.
“I do know sufferers who’re grappling with suicidality due to the torture that they’ve endured or the sexual violence that they’ve endured and their precarious immigration standing,” she stated.
“They’re nonetheless dwelling in shelters they usually don’t have a way of security and now they won’t have the trauma remedy that they must be protected.”
Dr. Parisa Rezaiefar, doctor lead of the Ottawa Newcomer Well being Centre, stated funding within the well being of refugees — lots of whom arrive in Canada sick or injured — will permit them to combine into the neighborhood and contribute to the financial system.
“The sooner we cope with individuals’s medical situation(s), the sooner we enrol them in language coaching and vocational coaching (and) the sooner we get them off supplemental care,” stated Rezaiefar, who got here to Canada as a refugee from Iran within the Nineteen Nineties.
The federal authorities introduced the introduction of the co-payments in its funds final yr and stated it’s a vital cost-saving measure.
The Canadian Press has reached out to the workplace of Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab for remark.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Could 1, 2026.
Canadian Press well being protection receives help by a partnership with the Canadian Medical Affiliation. CP is solely chargeable for this content material.
Nicole Eire, The Canadian Press