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Pfizer Ends Drug Cards for Elderly
Milt Freudenheim, New York Times
September 1, 2004
Pfizer, the nation's largest drug maker, ended its widely used discount card for the elderly yesterday, leaving several hundred thousand low-income Medicare beneficiaries at least temporarily without access to reduced prices for popular medicines like the cholesterol treatment Lipitor.
The company said that it had been warning its 536,000 cardholders for months that it would discontinue the discount program on Aug. 31 and that it had advised them to sign up for various discount cards that became available under a new Medicare program that began in June.
But consumer advocates, citing the widespread confusion over the new Medicare program, had asked Pfizer to keep its discount card in place until 2006 - the year that prescription drugs will become a standard part of Medicare benefits.
"A lot of people will be left high and dry starting tomorrow," said Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.
Under the former Pfizer card, a 30-day supply of Lipitor cost $15 - compared with $68 at one Internet pharmacy, for example, or $43.32 at one Canadian Web site.
Mr. Hayes said the Pfizer action was "a harbinger of trouble ahead" in the patchwork of Medicare drug programs, which include a welter of prices and eligibility requirements that some elderly people have found daunting to navigate.
So far only about 4.1 million of the nation's 40 million Medicare beneficiaries have signed up for Medicare-approved discount cards.
Under the federal discount card program set up under the Medicare overhaul legislation that Congress passed last fall, a participant in a Medicare card program can also use a drug company card to get prescriptions. Mr. Hayes's group had recommended that Medicare enrollees, in addition to signing up for a Medicare-approved card, also use the existing discount cards offered by Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and Merck. So far, Pfizer is the only one of those drug makers to discontinue a discount card since the new Medicare program began.
Dr. Mark B. McClellan, the administrator of the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, declined to comment on Pfizer's action yesterday, other than to note that he had urged all of the drug makers "to continue their existing programs."
The Pfizer discount card, called the Living Share Card, was introduced two years ago and was aimed at low-income elderly people.
In a July letter to Henry A. McKinnell Jr., the chief executive of Pfizer, Mr. Hayes, the consumer advocate, had written that "the end of Pfizer's Share card will diminish the chances that people will get the medications they need."
If holders of the discontinued Pfizer card have not already signed up for a separate Medicare-approved discount card, they can do so at any time. But if they already have a Medicare-approved card, the federal rules prevent them from changing cards until January. Mr. Hayes said his group worried that some holders of Medicare cards had selected cards that did not offer the best prices on Pfizer drugs on the assumption that they would continue using the Living Share cards.
Forest Harper, a Pfizer executive, said yesterday that the company had ended its Living Share Card so it could direct its programs for elderly consumers to the new Medicare program. Mr. Harper, the vice president of the Living Share Card program, said the company had conducted "huge programs" to tell elderly consumers how to obtain a Medicare-approved card. He said Pfizer did not know how many people had heeded its advice.
He said that Pfizer, like a number of other drug makers, had recently begun making deals with insurance companies and other Medicare card sponsors to merge the Pfizer low-income program into their own discount plans. He also said that in July Pfizer had announced a new discount drug program for people of all ages who did not have insurance.
A Pfizer spokesman said it was too early to say how many people would join that new program, which has been operating for only two weeks.
But Mr. Hayes said the new program offered less benefit for elderly patients who were not in the lowest income level. Under the Medicare cards, people with less than about $12,600 of annual income are eligible for $600 worth of free drugs. A number of companies, including Pfizer, offer special prices to people who have spent the $600.
In one Medicare-approved card program, U Share, which was sponsored by UnitedHealth Group and has 180,000 subscribers, low-income patients can get a 30-day supply of Lipitor at the same $15 price that had been available under Pfizer's discontinued discount card.
"An extremely savvy consumer can swim in these waters successfully," Mr. Hayes said. But many have not even tried. "Usually, the needier the person, the sicker the person, the more likely they will be shut out of these programs," he said.
Jerry Markie, a retired furniture salesman in Maplewood, Minn., said he had tried to interest friends and relatives in the Medicare cards. "Most seniors don't have a clue how to go about it; it's very sad," he said.
Mr. Markie said he had replaced his Pfizer card with a U Share card. Now he and his wife spend $172 each month for 13 drugs, spending $550 less than the retail prices.
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