While rising medication expenses continue to strain seniors and people with chronic illnesses, government action on Medicare prescription-drug benefits and other reforms remains slow.

        Each year, nearly 3 million people shell out at least $4,000 for prescription medication not covered by Medicare or other insurance, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

IT PAYS TO SHOP AROUND

How the most common drugs range in price locally.

        Millions more pay $1,000 to $4,000 a year for their drugs, with the numbers expected to grow as the population ages. Yet finding even partial coverage for drug bills is getting harder than ever, as thousands of Tristate seniors have been dropped from Medicare HMOs.

        For one couple, Donn and Jeanne Hubbard of Blue Ash, a drug bill exceeding $900 a month has become such a burden they had to sell their house.

        The Hubbards' experience, along with complaints from many other families about this issue, illustrates why some Tristate seniors and other health advocates have formed the All American Senior Health Initiative, a national effort to push for Medicare reform, said the group's organizer, Marilyn Hyland.

        “We have to make our elected officials recognize that this crisis can affect anyone,” Ms. Hyland said.

        “There is an exploding national need to expand senior and disabled health care. It has to include not only prescription drugs, but dental, hearing, vision and mental health, with no income qualifications.”

        The group is gathering petitions to send to Congress that call for expanded drug and health benefits. (For more information, go to www.allamericanseniorhealth.org.)

        Mr. Hubbard, 61, lost his job and eventually lost his medical benefits after being partially paralyzed by a stroke in 1994. He also was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer.

        The Hubbards are moving to California, where they plan to stay with friends and shop for cheap medications in Mexico. They say they are concerned that if they have to resort to such extremes, then other people with lesser means must be in even worse shape.

        “I think everybody should be writing to President Bush,” Mrs. Hubbard said. “I think the politicians are so out of touch with what's going on.”

        Pharmaceutical costs, which tripled from 1988 to 1998 to $103 billion nationwide, have sharply outpaced inflation. The average price of the top 50 medicines most often prescribed to the elderly rose 6.1 percent last year, more than three times the inflation rate, according to a report by Families USA.

        Some politicians are taking notice.

        “For (many) Ohio residents, the costs of health care and drugs, not a home, are the most expensive purchases they'll ever make,” Ohio Gov. Bob Taft said last week during a speech in Cincinnati.

        “I urge the federal government to begin closing some of the gaps in our health-care system by acting promptly to add a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare,” the governor said.

        In May, Congress approved a budget amendment that would set aside up to $300 billion over the next 10 years for prescription-drug benefits.

        However, Congress hasn't decided how to spend it. Proposals include programs focusing on benefits for low-income people and stop-loss, catastrophic drug benefits that pick up drug costs once they hit a certain level each year, regardless of income, said Tricia Neuman, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

        Several states have programs to relieve some of the elderly's drug costs. Ohio does not.

        However, the state House of Representatives has passed a bill calling for a drug discount program through the Golden Buckeye Card. The bill awaits consideration by a Senate committee.

        About 2 million Ohio residents, ages 60 and older, get the card through the Ohio Department of Aging.

        In theory, the state could use the size of the Golden Buckeye Card membership to negotiate good deals on medications. But lawmakers agree that a discount drug card would be no more than limited help.

        “To fully address the pharmaceutical issue, it has to be addressed at the national level,” said state Rep. Shawn Webster, a Millville Republican. “To require the state to cover medications that people can't afford, I don't think there's enough money in the budget to do that.”

        For information about the Golden Buckeye Card, call the Department of Aging, (800) 422-1976.

        The Families USA report also noted that seniors could save hundreds of dollars a year simply by shopping more aggressively.

        For several years, the local Working in Neigborhoods Senior Action Coalition has published an annual survey comparing prices on 15 commonly prescribed drugs at area pharmacies. The coalition has found that retail prices can vary widely — even within the same store chain — for the same drugs.

        For example, brand-name Zantac pills for heartburn ranged from $49.79 to $64.75 per bottle in the Tristate. Generic versions ranged from $10.22 to $49.79 per bottle.

        For information about the coalition's prescription drug survey, call 541-4109.

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