Insurance companies claim closed PPNs will help ordinary people and reduce premiums.

Not in the slightest bit believable

This is horrible. PPNs are only good for the insurer. Not exactly the same, but when I was going through university in the early aughts, my parent's insurance had some pretty stupid restrictions on medications. I wasn't allowed to see the on-campus medical team to get prescriptions renewed, it HAD to be from my GP, and the prescriptions HAD to be filled within so many kms of my home address. No idea how they handled medical emergencies, but I heard horror stories of classmates being stuck with large prescription bills for a couple inhalers because they couldn't get "home".

Huh. I didn't know it was like that outside Québec. That sounds so... American

Quebec seems to be on the avant-garde, always. Anything that makes the market resemble what is done in America should never have been allowed and should have cost them more for even having the audacity to try

Outrageous!

This kind of activity should prompt regulatory investigation from every possible angle. All involved businesses should be gone through with a fine tooth comb. Every louse found: squished. Incarnations and expropriation at the highest level responsible for every violation.

Of course it should be specifically banned. retroactively.