It was long overdue, and began with a promise: It might start small, covering just a few common drugs, and expand until Canadians without benefits were no longer struggling to afford medication prescribed by doctors under our universal health care system.

Less than two years later, however, the program seems set to contract instead of expand. It never got beyond the first couple of drugs, and the funding might well be squeezed to zero by the federal government. What happened here? Does Pharmacare still have a chance? And why weren't necessary drugs part of a "universal" health care system in the first place?

Nikolas Barry-Shaw, a campaigner at the Council of Canadians, joins us to discuss how such a promising program became at risk of vanishing as quickly as it became reality.

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