A Private Insurer Pays for a Canadian Youth’s Medical Marijuana Treatment

Jonathan Zaid is a 22 year old suffering from a rare disease: chronic daily migraines. This past summer he filed a request with the insurance giant Sun Life Financial asking for it to pay for his treatment with medicinal marijuana, but the company refused. 

Although medicinal marijuana is legal in Canada for patients with a doctor's authorisation, cannabis still does not have the corresponding identification number making it standard in the industry and authorising pharmacists to sell it. 

Zaid decided not to give up. He had tried 48 different medicines in recent years, but only marijuana alleviated his chronic headaches. The young man decided to present a study on the medicinal benefits of marijuana before a supervisory committee of the students' association at the University of Waterloo. This body recognised the merits of his arguments, and asked Sun Life to make an exception.

In the end Sun Life decided to issue Zaid a check for 3,000 dollars (more than 2,700 euros), which covers the costs of the cannabis, in addition to a 750-dollar (almost 700 euro) vaporiser. “I had to fight many battles to get where I am,” Zaid declared. "My persistence has finally paid off."

It still remains to be seen whether Zaid's case will set a precedent and the insurer will cover other cases like his, though it has already issued an official announcement indicating that it will consider, as far as possible, accommodating these kinds of requests.

At this time the youth is striving so that other patients receive the same response he did, and has founded a non-profit organisation, Canadians for Access to Medicinal Marijuana, to place pressure on more insurers. "I hope to help other defenders of patients nation-wide, promoting medicinal marijuana so that doctors and everybody feels more comfortable with it and the stigma is diminished," he argues.