Scantlebury Wealth Management

Most Canadians tend to be reassured by Canada’s universal healthcare system. We are so reassured that we hold a simple belief: if we get sick, all we need to do is go to the hospital. The system will take care of the rest. To be fair, our public health care system does excel at immediate emergency care, basic hospital stays, and standard physician visits. However, increasingly, many of us are finding that it has critical vulnerabilities. This is especially true when it comes to surgical wait times and the approval of new medications, treatments and therapies. Accordingly, if someone’s provincial health care coverage falls short, patients face a grim ultimatum: wait while their health deteriorates, or pay out-of-pocket for private or out-of-country treatment. Increasingly, an unimaginable situation is becoming increasingly common: spending $200,000 now for out-of-country treatment, so that you could appeal a decision by your provincial government later. For most families, absorbing such...

Canada finds itself at an unprecedented demographic crossroads. A growing segment of the population now belongs to the "sandwich generation": individuals between the ages of 30 and 60 who find themselves simultaneously supporting dependent children and aging parents. In many modern households, due to remarriages, late-in-life births, or increased longevity, caregivers are often juggling three or even four generations at once. In such a busy environment, there are the usual distractions. There are the usual dental appointments to clean teeth and add crowns. There are medical appointments for bumps, bruises and check-ups. Someone has to do the cooking and the grocery shopping, while simultaneously ensuring that the car gets taken to the mechanic to change the oil, or the tires. Kids have to be taken to extracurricular activities, like basketball try-outs, dance or piano recitals, soccer or hockey lessons. In this modern world, there is very little time for rest, let alone to th...

Medical science is evolving at a historic pace. Breakthrough treatments that were once deemed impossible are now becoming a reality, offering families renewed hope in the face of devastating diagnoses. However, these medical advancements highlight a critical truth about modern healthcare: innovation comes with a significant price tag, and public health systems cannot always cover every cost immediately. Just look at the Lecanemab (brand name Leqembi) - a groundbreaking disease-modifying therapy for early-stage Alzheimer’s disease - and its recent journey through Canada's approval process. This drug's journey is important because it provides one simple example of why personal financial protection, specifically Critical Illness Insurance, is no longer optional in Canada. In February 2026, Canada's Drug Agency - a pan-Canadian health organization, created and funded by Canada’s federal, provincial, and territorial governments - issued an initial preliminary draft recommending ...

When I first got my life insurance license, I was surprised by the number of people who didn’t have disability insurance. Yet today, I understand why it happens. Most of us are happy to receive a paycheque, and most of us are even happier when our employer offers us a group insurance policy. The reason is simple: in most people’s mind, a group benefit insurance policy is the gold standard in the employee-employer relationship.  Yet, there is something that most people don’t fully appreciate: disability insurance coverage does not come standard in that arrangement. It came as a surprise when I started evaluating  group benefit packages. However, over the years, it has become one of the things that I look for. The reason for this discrepancy, this incongruity, is simple: group insurance packages are not all the same. Or put differently, there is no standard group benefit package. Rather, each package is a creation of a broker, an employer (or plan sponsor) and the group insuranc...

  When we think about surviving a critical illness like cancer, a stroke, or a major cardiovascular event, we tend to focus on things we can see: our genetic history, what we eat, how often we exercise, and the skill of our medical team. But public health data reveals a much starker truth. One of the most powerful predictors of whether you develop a critical illness—and whether you survive it—isn’t written in your DNA. It’s stamped on your mail. Where you live dictates your environment, your stress levels, and your access to life-saving care. This phenomenon is deeply tied to the “social determinants of health (SDOH)”: the non-medical factors that shape our daily lives. Accordingly, it is not a surprise that public health experts frequently point out that your postal code matters as much as your genetic code when it comes to your health outcomes. However, when it comes to true financial wellness during a medical crisis, there is another factor that dictates your survival: whether y...

Imagine starting a new job, full of hope for the future, only to have your world turned upside down two weeks later. That is exactly what happened to Kayla in 2023. After finding a lump on her neck and experiencing difficulty swallowing, she was diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid carcinoma - a rare and aggressive form of thyroid cancer. The problem for Kayla was a simple one: she had recently taken time off to care for her two small children; and, she hadn't built up enough hours in her new job, in her new role. The result? She was completely ineligible for EI sickness benefits. Which brings me to a key point: the financial strain of a critical illness doesn’t just come from the loss of a paycheck. Sometimes, the hidden cost is just receiving the treatment. In Kayla’s case, this meant travelling 3 hours from a rural home to an urban centre. In Kayla’s case, this meant leaving young children behind for 6 weeks during treatment, isolating children from their ill parent at a time when...

The Government of Ontario recently announced that they are making significant changes to the  availability of high-cost cancer medications.  Under its “Funding Accelerated for Specific  Treatments” (FAST) program, selected cancer drugs will get more public funding a year faster than is  already the case. A three-year pilot initiative, the FAST program aims to fast-track seven to ten high-priority cancer treatments each year. Currently, the following drugs are being funded through this program: Tagrisso ([osimertinib] for lung cancer), Scemblix (for a leukemia variant), Nubeqa (for prostate cancer), Calquence ([acalabrutinib tablets] for lymphoma), Opdivo with Yervoy (for colorectal cancer and for liver cancer).  To this we say, hurray.  However, in our view, this change highlights a few of the problems that cancer patients have to overcome when they receive a cancer diagnosis in Canada. The first problem is access. In Canada, provinces have a hard task: bri...

  In a sobering convergence of health and economics, new research is presenting Canadians with a problematic paradox: while the Canadian health system is getting better at treating cancer,  the sheer volume of cases and the skyrocketing cost of treatment are threatening to overwhelm that very same system. Reports from The Lancet and recent provincial data indicate that we are getting better at caring for cancer patients; because, when the data is standardized for age, cancer death rates in Canada actually declined by 29% between 1990 and 2023. However, while the Canadian Healthcare system has improved the life expectancy for cancer patients, Canada is seeing a trend of more cancer diagnosis due to the success of our early detection regime and our aging population. Consequently, Canada is expected to follow trends found globally and we are expecting to see more cases.  Worldwide, by 2050, with 2023 as a baseline, there is an expectation of a 65% increase in the rate of dia...

If you spend any amount of time listening to Canadians, it becomes clear that our health care system  does a good job at treating critical illnesses like cancer, heart attacks and strokes. However, it has  some severe limitations. One of those limitations is imposing a large amount of costs on individual patients. Last year, CBC talked about a Calgary man who was facing cancer treatment delays because the specialized therapy he needs is offered in Edmonton, but is not yet offered in Calgary. With that being said, there are also recent reports that many women in Saskatchewan are having trouble getting urgent breast cancer biopsies; and there are two reasons for that. Firstly, the care is not offered in their home province of Saskatchewan. They have to travel to Alberta, specifically Calgary, to get the care that the government of Saskatchewan will pay for. However, this is where the second problem comes to the fore: even with partial reimbursement from the Government of Saskatc...