[11/26/03]Vicksburg seniors who could be helped by legislation passed by Congress Tuesday said they would welcome any relief from high drug prices.

A retail pharmacist, on the other hand, said he was strongly opposed to the plan, which would shift some control over senior citizens’ drug-purchasing decisions from the drug consumers to private health plans and insurers.

Congress Tuesday passed a bill that would give people on Medicare their first outside-the-hospital benefits for prescription drugs. Those new benefits were to account for most of the $390 billion in net new federal spending the bill is expected to generate during the next 10 years.

About 40 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare, which is for people who are over age 65 or disabled.

President Bush was expected to sign the bill . The full prescription-drug benefits would not take effect until 2006.

Juanita Boling, 83, was one of four women playing dominoes at the Vicksburg Senior Center Tuesday afternoon. All said they took prescribed medications and would prefer more help in paying for them.

Boling said she receives Social Security benefits, is enrolled in Medicare and purchases prescription heart medicine costing at least $65 a month at a local pharmacy.

“I don’t buy regular medicine like I used to; I buy generic,” Boling said, referring to the generally less-expensive non-brand-name drugs. “I never did want to go to generic, but I don’t have the money with my Social Security like it is.”

The bill’s intent was to update Medicare, which was begun in 1965. The prescription benefit would help senior citizens take advantage of pharmaceutical advances over the past 40 years, Bush said. Such preventive care could reduce the cost of more-expensive treatment later, he added.

Under the bill, insurance companies would provide those enrolled in Medicare with prescription-drug coverage at government-established prices. Patients whose annual drug bills exceed about $810 will benefit from the plan. From that amount to $2,250, the government would reimburse them for three-fourths of their drug expenses.

Patients’ annual drug expenses above that amount would only be reimbursable if they exceeded $3,600.

The coverage’s effective floor would be waived for the poor, who would be charged only a co-payment of a few dollars for each prescription.

Democrats said the bill had many flaws. They argued, for example, against its use of private health plans and insurance companies.

“The bottom line is, it’s anti-small business,” said Battlefield Discount Drugs manager Jason Cannon. Though discount chains or mail-order suppliers might sell at lower prices, they often cannot provide the timely service that prescriptions often require, he said.

With a minimum annual drug bill of $780, Boling would face the risk of receiving no benefit from such a plan if she were to enroll. Her annual premium payments would total about $420, and the first $250 she spent on drugs would go toward meeting her annual deductible.

The bill also includes $86 billion over the 10 years in financial incentives for employers to provide coverage to their retired workers.

Another of the senior center dominoes players, Barbara Morgan, 61, said she is on Medicare with a disability and receives partial coverage of her drug expenses through her husband’s former employer. She purchases medicines by mail at a monthly out-of-pocket cost of about $350, she said.

“I take a lot of medicine, so it would help me for the government to pay what I have to pay out of my own pocket,” she said.

Both Morgan and Judy Thompson, who is 60 and not enrolled in Medicare, said they have some prescriptions they do not get filled because they cannot afford the cost.