Give credit to Senate leader Rick Bennett for persuading Heinz Family Philanthropies to add Maine to the states where it has studied prescription drug costs and devised plans for making them more affordable to Medicare recipients. The Maine plan presented Thursday is an encouraging start to a major expansion of coverage for all seniors. It deserves both legislative support and time to develop into an important addition to Maine Medicare programs.

Along with Sen. Bennett, the Heinz plan to Overcome Prescription Expenses (HOPE) was co-sponsored by Senate President Michael Michaud and Speaker Michael Saxl, giving it support among Republicans and Democrats, although the fiery language of the plan’s introduction sounds more Green than mainstream.

“The reality is that Congress is at a political standstill and lacks the courage and conviction to address this problem at its root cause,” the HOPE report says. “Congress refuses to examine why the United States remains one of the few nations in the world that does not regulate the costs of prescription drugs. In the absence of a complete and overall reform of the Medicare program, we believe that each state should be given the financial resources to lead by designing supplemental programs like state-based prescription drug coverage for seniors.”

The HOPE plan works like any good insurance product: It spreads risk over a large group, makes it attractive enough to the healthy to avoid what is called “adverse selection” and offers strong incentives through co-payments for participants to use less costly generic drugs. It is a fair plan because it bases its charges for deductibles, premiums and catastrophic coverage on income. And it is a smart plan that expands rather than duplicates the state’s current drug program for the elderly. When fully in place, it would provide coverage to nearly 30,000 people while remaining cost-neutral to the state, according to the consulting firm of William M. Mercer.

Maine needs as many ways as it can get to provide affordable options for prescription drugs, so this one should be welcomed. The HOPE strategy released this week, however, still is in something of a draft stage – some numbers need to be filled in and how it will work with other state programs and complement private insurance needs to be clarified. But lawmakers should use the spring and summer to work out these details with a goal of coming up with a final version by the next session. They would no doubt benefit from similar work done in other states.

Until the federal government gets “the courage and conviction to address this problem at its root cause” proposals like the HOPE plan are about the best chance states have to extend prescription coverage to the uninsured. Lawmakers should support the version presented in Augusta this week and work to make it part of Maine’s answer to high drug prices.