Niagara NDP MPP Wayne Gates wants the prostate cancer blood test (PSA) to be free.
“We are working so hard to pass my motion to have OHIP cover the costs of PSA testing when referred to by a health care provider,” Gates said on Monday, “This year alone, it is estimated that 5,000 men will lose their lives to this devastating disease, but we also know that when prostate cancer is detected early, nearly 100 per cent of men with the disease will survive five years or longer.”
Currently, LifeLabs list the tests as costing $39 — a small price, but one that Anthony Dixon, a physician who himself has had prostate cancer, says might cost one of his patients their life.
“I asked him if he ever had a PSA test and he told me that five years ago his last doctor had ordered him one, but he couldn’t afford to pay for the test, so he never got it.”
Not longer after, the patient ended up with a terminal diagnosis, Dixon said.
For Peter Ward, the husband of Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, a similar incident occurred.
He says the doctor offered him the test, but then brought up the small price. “Do you still want it?” Ward recalls the doctor asking him. “I had a vague notion of what this test was for, that it wasn’t important, but nice to have.”
What he ended up discovering plunged his family into what he says was “hell and uncertainty.”
Ward says it the test uncovered that he was at a high-risk for developing prostate cancer.
“What if he didn’t have the money? He was asymptomatic and we have no idea what was coming?” Meed Ward says.
No one should have to choose between groceries and a life saving diagnostic test. Thank you MPP Gates for leading the effort to have the fee eliminated. My husband Pete and I were honoured to join you and other patients and advocates this morning. https://t.co/9EXWFrvEy1
— Marianne Meed Ward (@MariannMeedWard) September 16, 2024