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From the Director
By Catherine R. May
Help with Prescription Drug Costs
Prescription medications help older persons with a myriad of conditions, and indeed help to prolong the lives of may people of all ages. Some of the medications available today are indeed wonder drugs, fighting back hypertension, arthritis, and delaying the progression of Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s disease and other life threatening conditions.
Anyone who uses today’s "wonder drugs", however, is painfully aware of the cost of these medications, and for elders in particular, the combination of a fixed income and high prescription medication costs can force difficult choices.
The commonwealth has recently introduced the Prescription Advantage plan, to help elders of all income levels pay for their prescription medications. Prescription Advantage is an insurance plan, and has premiums, deductibles, and co-pays; the higher one’s income, the more one has to pay. Information on the Prescription Advantage Plan is available through Elder Services or through SHINE (Serving Health Insurance Information Needs of Elders) counselors who are located at many of the Senior Centers throughout the county.
Other new plans for helping elders with prescriptions through the purchase of discount cards for prescription purchases have been offered by both the Bush administration and regional collaborations concerned with bringing down consumer costs. The for- profit companies, which advertise their discount cards on television, may offer a discount of five to ten percent; the non-profits and public discount cards soon to be available hope to offer deeper discounts.
Retail pharmacists are worried about the impact of these discount drug cards on their earnings. Discounts that reduce the earnings of the already threatened local pharmacies, but don’t really touch the profits gleaned by the pharmaceutical corporations, will create more inequities.
All this recent activity to address the problems of elders and others who require high priced medications to maintain their health and quality of life is encouraging in that at least this problem is now on the national, regional, and state radar screens.
The Prescription Advantage plan will help many Massachusetts elders pay for their prescription medications, discount cards too will offer relief, but all this is stopgap activity while we wait for a real national program to help elders pay their prescription drug costs. Medicare will not meet the health care needs of older Americans until it includes prescription drug coverage. The Congress and the Bush administration need to face this reality, summon the political will to include prescription medication coverage within Medicare, and then make it happen. Until then, undue anxiety and financial distress will continue to be unwanted side effects of many elders’ medically necessary prescription drugs.