Drug maker touts discount plan

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Drug maker touts discount plan

Pfizer estimates 105,000 Iowans are eligible for its program, which offers drugs for $15 a month.

By TONY LEYS

Des Moines Register, August 22, 2003

Representatives of the country's largest prescription-drug maker barnstormed Iowa Thursday, urging senior citizens to apply for big discounts on popular medicines.

Pfizer's "Share Card" offers most of the company's brands for $15 per month to Medicare recipients with relatively low incomes.

Company Vice President Forest Harper said 8,300 Iowans have signed up since the program started last year. The company has given out 60,000 prescriptions worth $4.2 million to those people. "But you know what? It's not enough," Harper said.

He estimated about 105,000 Iowans would meet the card's qualifications. Those include that a person is on Medicare, the federal insurance plan for the elderly and disabled. Applicants must not have their medicines purchased by other programs, such as Medicaid, veterans' insurance or a private Medicare supplement plan. Applicants' annual incomes must be less than $18,000 for single people or $24,000 for couples.

Harper urged about a dozen seniors gathered at a Des Moines community center Thursday to look into the program for themselves, and to tell their friends about it. Republican and Democratic legislators and leaders of patient-advocacy groups attended the meeting, and applauded the program.

Drugmakers have taken a public-relations beating lately, with allegations of price-gouging and callousness toward the welfare of elderly people who can't afford the medicines they need. Politicians have taken turns vilifying the companies and suggesting that the government step in to control prices or allow Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada.

Harper acknowledged in an interview after the meeting that skeptics could dismiss drug companies' discount cards as an attempt to blunt the criticism. But he said Pfizer and other drugmakers have spent tens of millions of dollars over the past three decades helping poor people buy drugs. The companies haven't done a good job of letting people know about those programs, he said, helping fuel the public-relations problem. "That's our fault," he said.

He said the Share Card program is intended to help seniors while they wait for Congress to pass a Medicare bill that would help pay for prescription drugs. That debate is expected to resume next month, and it could include passage of a national discount card that would go to every Medicare recipient. Harper said Pfizer would adjust its program to fit in with the new federal plans.

Maria Raymond of Des Moines was heartened by Harper's description of the program. She hopes to save more than $100 a month on two of Pfizer's drugs, Lipitor for cholesterol and Norvasc for high blood pressure. She shrugged at questions about the company's motives, and said she's not worried about the possibility that the program could disappear as soon as Congress passes a less-generous plan. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," she said.

The Share Card and other company plans are separate from Iowa Priority, a state drug-discount plan for seniors. Iowa Priority supporters have criticized Pfizer and several other drugmakers for refusing to offer discounts through the state program. Those refusals have minimized the amount Iowa Priority members can save on many medicines.

Harper said Pfizer had legal and technical concerns about the way Iowa Priority was set up. His company preferred to create its own program, he said.

Information about TogetherRx, a drug-discount card offered by several other pharmaceutical companies, can be found at www.togetherrx.com or (800) 865-7211.