USA to trial Medicare seniors' Rx drug plan

For the first time, the US government is to conduct a trial Medicareprescription drug benefit plan. The three-year experiment will be open, from July 1, to retired members of the United Mine Workers of America, the Department of Health and Human Services has said. The union's retirement fund will now be reimbursed for 27% of the costs of its prescription drug program.

The Department also said that a Medicaid prescription drug trial program which began in the state of Vermont this month is to be expanded to cover low-income earners in the state of Maine. The Maine Prescription Drug Discount Program, which also starts in July, will be open to as many as 225,000 state residents with no prescription drug insurance and whose annual income is up to 300% of the federal poverty level, ie around $25,000 for a single person and $33,750 for a couple.

The plan requires no state or federal tax money, and comes after the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America brought down the the state's proposed Maine Rx Program (Marketletters passim). However, an industry challenge to the Vermont plan's commencement this month (Marketletter December 18, 2000) was rejected in a federal court on January 17.