In Portland, Maine, the Department of Health and Human Services eyed busing elderly residents to Canada to buy cheaper-priced prescription drugs--something several other border states do. For Portlanders, that would be an expensive and tedious eight-hour trip. So the city put them on a virtual bus. The office of Elder Affairs taught about 30 retirees who were not computer literate how to use the Internet and navigate to a site called The Canadian Drugstore to fill their prescriptions. "We were the electronic middleman," says Gerald Cayer, director of HHS. "We were the bus."
A broad mix of North Carolina organizations--from hospitals to county health departments to not-for-profits--have been awarded grants from the North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund Commission to set up prescription centers to help seniors and low-income individuals find free, low-cost or discounted medications. Using a software program from the Department of Health and Human Services that can search for the least expensive way to buy a medicine, citizens can plug in their age, income, medications and other information, and the program will analyze all the choices available--from state and local to private alternatives.
Arizona is launching a discount card for seniors to buy presciption drugs. The medicines will be provided by a network of pharmacies at a reduced cost negotiated by the state.
