The Folly of Cancelling Medicare Coverage for Vitamin D Testing

This is the first of an eight part series exploring Ontario's decision to stop OHIP/Medicare funding for vitamin D tests.

"We estimate that vitamin D deficiency is the most common medical condition in the world." Dr. Michael F. Holick, Vitamin D Expert.

Although it's not official yet, Ontario will soon be stopping OHIP/Medicare coverage for vitamin D tests for all but certain individuals already suffering from proven vitamin D deficiency diseases. By the time you read this, it may already be too late to save vitamin D blood testing coverage.

This does not mean that you won't be able to get vitamin D testing, just that you will be out of pocket $51.70 to your friendly neighborhood laboratory. Other nutritional lab tests that you already have to pay for in a similar way are homocysteine, gluten food allergy tests, IgG RAST food allergy tests, lipoprotein "a," red cell magnesium and urinary indican (bowel toxemia) tests. These are just the ones that are done by Ontario labs and do not include tests done by any American laboratory (e.g. comprehensive stool and digestive analysis).

Other provinces (Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan) have already stopped paying for vitamin D testing unless the individual suffers from a vitamin D deficiency related disease such as osteoporosis. British Columbia has recently simply requested that doctors order fewer vitamin D blood tests under a new 'voluntary protocol."

According to the OMA (Ontario Medical Association), vitamin D testing coverage will remain only for those suffering from "conditions such as osteoporosis, rickets, osteopenia, malabsorption syndromes, and renal disease, or drugs that affect Vitamin D metabolism."

In other words, if you are healthy or have cancer, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, any autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, recurrent infections of unknown cause, depression, autism or any other mental or physical disorder, you are out of luck to get Medicare coverage for vitamin D testing.

You are therefore, in a sense, penalized $51.70 for vitamin D testing just because you are healthy or suffer from the wrong disease. Now, if that sounds unfair or weird in some way, you are not alone in thinking that.

Not too long ago, I authored a book on vitamin D (Vitamin D, The Sunshine Vitamin; The Book Publishing Company: 2010). In the book I discussed the thousands of published studies supporting the importance of adequate vitamin D blood levels in hundreds of health and clinical conditions. In fact there are studies that prove that vitamin D deficiency may be responsible for death from all causes. Wouldn't it then make sense to cover the cost of a test that could lead to the prevention of unnecessary illness in millions of people? The savings for Medicare in the long run would be substantial at the very least.  

In my next blog post, we look at how this will affect your good health.