OTTAWA -A week after they startled the country by proposing a federally-funded national pharmacare program, Canada's premiers are scrambling to figure out its costs and implications before they must provide details to Prime Minister Paul Martin.

The pressure to produce some analysis will bring the province's health and finance ministers together this month to examine the concept, Joe Handley, premier of the Northwest Territories, said in an interview Thursday.

The premiers might then hold another meeting early in September, he said, to review the research before opening negotiations with Martin on Sept. 13.

Handley conceded that the premiers lacked a financial analysis of the proposal when they put it forward at their July meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

"We didn't have with us the specific numbers, the dollar implications," said Handley. "There's been a lot of numbers thrown around about what this would cost.

"We've asked our health and finance ministers to meet before the end of August, work out what the actual costs would be and what the implications are and, following that, we do our own assessment and finalize our strategy in meeting with the prime minister."

The premiers proposed last week that the national plan replace existing provincial drug plans except Quebec's and be fully funded by the federal government. They provided no official cost estimate.

Experts estimate the cost at anywhere from $7 billion to $12 billion annually. One reason for the uncertainty is that there's a wide variation in provincial drug plans, and some provinces have none, so national pharmacare would be more than simply a sum of existing programs.

Handley said the prime minister expressed concern about the cost of the pharmacare proposal in a telephone conversation this week.

"I did talk to the prime minister and his concern was around the dollars and the cost to bring everyone up to one national standard, because this would probably mean moving people up to a higher level of service rather than down to some middle level. That's a legitimate concern."

Besides funding pharmacare, the premiers also want Ottawa to increase transfer payments to provinces to bring the federal contribution to 25 per cent of total health spending. Quebec officials said that would take an extra $5 billion annually.

Provincial officials said last week the premiers picked up the idea of a national pharmacare program from a study done for the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.

The pharmacare proposal was only a brief mention - minus any detail or analysis - in the study, which looks at the broader issue of how medicare can be sustained for the long term.

Handley denied that the premiers floated the plan without doing their homework. He said Martin promised a national pharmacare program in the last election, without specifying that it would cover catastrophic costs only.

"This thought has been around for a long time. It wasn't just off the cuff. It is quite a shift in costs but to the average Canadian, they don't care whether the federal or provincial or territorial government pays for it. They just want a standard level of health.

"Is it too expensive to have one standard program for all Canadians? That's a scary thought, that we should have different programs for people depending on where they live. I don't agree with that. You shouldn't have to say I can't afford the new drugs for cancer. That shouldn't be happening in Canada."

Roy Romanow, who headed a royal commission on medicare, says there isn't a chance that Ottawa will fund national pharmacare. Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh has said Ottawa is interested in a limited plan to cover catastrophic drug costs.

Handley said it might be possible to introduce national pharmacare in stages, beginning with coverage of catastrophic drug costs.