Snowe hopes for deal on Rx drug measures Senator talks to seniors in Bangor about bills

BANGOR – The flurry of pre-election deal-making in Congress over prescription drug bills has stopped for the August recess, but it’s not over, Sen. Olympia Snowe said Thursday.

The Maine senator said she thinks the climate remains ripe for a compromise next month to give senior citizens relief from the cost of prescription drugs. Republicans, Democrats and independents have never been closer to finding common ground, she said.

“Frankly, this is as close as we’ve come in the 37-year history of the Medicare program [to having a drug benefit],” Snowe said Thursday. “We are within reach.”

Snowe came to Bangor to report to a group of seniors she had briefed in May about the prescription drug proposal she helped write, but had yet to introduce to Congress.

The so-called “tripartisan” plan has since hit the floor. It would create a government subsidy to cover three-quarters of the cost of policies created for seniors by private insurance companies. In one vote, the plan failed in the Senate 51-48, nine votes short of the 60 needed. Supporters offered to increase the bill’s coverage by upping its price over 10 years from $370 billion to $400 billion, but that didn’t help.

Many Democrats favored another measure, the $400 million Graham-Smith bill, because it would use Medicare, not private insurers, to administer a benefit.

When a version of that proposal began to garner support and “was leaving the station,” Snowe said she took to the floor to derail it, even as Maine’s other senator, Republican Susan Collins, signed on.

Snowe said the government never does anything like this well, which is why she prefers involvement of the private sector in any plan.

“It isn’t within government to think competitively,” Snowe said. She explained that insurers look for ways to eliminate expenses.

She also opposed the bill’s means test that would put low-income seniors with less than $17,720 in annual income under Medicaid, not Medicare. Individuals above the $17,720 cutoff wouldn’t see any drug coverage until they’d spent $3,300 in any year, which Snowe said is unacceptable.

She said the bill also would have created a $70 billion unfunded mandate on state budgets.

Collins signed onto the Graham bill when it was clear that the tripartisan bill’s prospects had faded. Collins faces a stiff re-election challenge from Democrat Chellie Pingree, who wrote Maine’s Rx law and has made prescription drug issues a centerpiece of her campaign.

Across the nation, prescription drugs are expected to be an important issue among senior citizens, who make up a larger share of midterm election voters because fewer younger voters turn out.

The 16 people who gathered to talk with Snowe on Thursday in Bangor at the Eastern Agency on Aging office had much to say.

“A lot of us aren’t in the mood to accept a partial solution,” said Charles Sias of Bangor. He said seniors also aren’t impressed with the idea of putting something in place that can be fixed later.

“Half a loaf won’t do it,” Sias said. “So what you are doing here is great.”

“I feel you are on the right track,” said Leonard Russell of Millinocket. “You’re not going to be able to satisfy everyone, but the time has come to start something.”

Several seniors spoke at length about why there need to be restraints on what drug companies can charge. But a few tempered the discussion by saying they didn’t want to muck up any possible compromise to achieve a drug benefit.

“I feel there has to be something to prevent [drug companies] from gouging, and they do gouge,” Russell said.

Arthur Webb of Bangor described a magazine article he had read that said pharmacy benefit managers for insurance companies and employers were getting a form of kickback for putting specific drugs on the list they will pay for.

“The only way you’re going to get rid of this kind of [activity] would be to have government units negotiate the price of all drugs,” Webb said.

“I really feel strongly that Congress does not understand the depth of concern that people have about what’s going on in the pharmaceutical industry,” said Virginia Fortier of Old Town.

She said she thinks members of Congress hear the complaints, but simply get used to it. If Congress enacts a plan without a mechanism to get prices under control “it will skyrocket just as everything else,” she said. She noted that seniors see all the drug company advertising and “we all understand what it costs.”