As you are acutely aware, outpatient prescription drug coverage is one of the last major benefits still excluded from Medicare; the elderly are the last major insured consumer group without access to coverage for prescription drugs as a standard benefit!

A local study by Congressman John Larson found that the average retail prices for the five best-selling drugs for older Americans average 140% more than the price the drug companies charge their most favored customers (big bargaining blocks of people like HMOs and federal and state employees.)

On January 25th of this year, the NBC Evening News reported that during the last year, prescription drug costs have risen twice as much as the cost of hospitals and doctors. Last year the cost increase was six times the increase of inflation! Wow!!!

A recent study by Families USA reported that the 39 drugs that were used most frequently by seniors that were on the market from January 1994 to January 1999 increased in price at least seven times.

The drug companies claim that the price increase is due to the increased cost of research. However, USA has learned that pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much on advertising as they do on research. Also, the 24 pharmaceutical companies that produced the 50 top-selling prescription drugs purchased by older Americans made a median net profit of 4.5% times the median profit for all Fortune 500 companies.

In November of 1999, USA conducted a “Bills for Pills” campaign to document the experience of our own Seniors. USA found many cases like a woman in Hebron who paid out $1,077.13 in a single month for prescription drugs; she has no insurance that covers prescriptions. USA discovered that many seniors who do not qualify for ConnPACE regularly pay hundreds of dollars per month for prescriptions.

USA’s newly-elected president Marilyn Slate catapulted our prescription drug cost campaign into the new millennium with her testimony before the state’s Committee on Aging on January 6, 2000:

“The majority of responding seniors reported having trouble making ends meet. Many commented that without assistance from their families they would not be able to fill all their prescriptions. A few reported using their savings to pay for prescriptions and others noted that they had to get part-time jobs in order to meet prescription expenses.”