Maryland Lieutenant Governor Announces Plan To Give State’s Seniors Discounts on Prescription Drugs

While campaigning on June 11, Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) proposed a prescription drug discount plan for 200,000 state seniors, the Baltimore Sun reports. Under the plan, 110,000 seniors without private prescription drug coverage would receive an average 28% discount off a medication's retail price, and about 90,000 low-income seniors -- annual incomes of $15,500 for an individual and $20,900 for a couple -- would receive an average 35% discount. Program participants would pay a $1 "dispensing fee" to pharmacists filling their prescriptions. The program, which would cost the state an estimated $8 million per year, would be funded in large part by price reductions negotiated with drug makers. Much of Townsend's plan builds on legislation that the state Assembly failed to approve in recent years, the Sun reports. The Assembly two years ago proposed a program that would allow 30,000 low-income seniors to receive coverage for up to $1,000 of their drug expenses each year. Seniors would have paid $10 each month to participate in that program. "These [prescription] drugs are literally out of the reach of thousands of Marylanders. It's wrong," Townsend said. State Sen. Bob Ehrlich (R), Townsend's opponent in the Maryland gubernatorial race, called the proposal "unaffordable and unwise," adding, "The state is broke, period. To offer clearly unaffordable solutions to raise expectations is not the way to go." Representatives from Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said they would not comment on the proposal until more details are available (Libit, Baltimore Sun, 6/12).