The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday, March 11, edition that public spending on prescription medications in Canada rose by over 9 per cent in 2024, primarily due to Novo Nordisk's Ozempic. The Globe's Kelly Grant writes that the Canadian Institute for Health Information reported that taxpayer-funded drug plans spent $20.1-billion on prescriptions, a 9.3-per-cent increase from nearly $18.4-billion in 2023. This marks the highest annual growth rate in public drug spending in 20 years. CIHI said Ozempic, a treatment for Type 2 diabetes, was responsible for 8.5 per cent of the total growth in 2024, the last year for which data are available. However, that is lower than the previous year, when Ozempic fuelled nearly 20 per cent of a 6.7-per-cent increase in government spending on prescribed drugs. Individual drugs do not often have such a dramatic impact on the bottom line of public drug plans, according to Tracy Johnson, CIHI's director of health spending. "It's happened before, but it's rare," she said. The CIHI analysis shows that governments in Canada spent $794.1-million on Ozempic, also known as semaglutide, in 2024. That is up from $130.5-million in 2020, when far fewer Canadians took the medication.