By Amy McCullough
Enquirer Columbus Bureau

Walter and Gerry Wever of Erlanger visit the St. Vincent de Paul Community Pharmacy in Crescent Springs, where Mr. Wever picked up medicine for his diabetes. The Cincinnati Enquirer/GARY LANDERS

COLUMBUS - Northern Kentucky resident Virginia Steele gets a $649 Social Security check each month, but her monthly prescription bill is $588.

Without the St. Vincent de Paul Community Pharmacy - which gives Steele her medicine for free - the 62-year-old would only have $61 to live on a month.

If she didn't have the help, she said: "I wouldn't have been able to have that medication, plain and simple. I would be on the street."

The pharmacy, in Crescent Springs, provides free prescription samples to people who don't have insurance or to those whose insurance does not cover the cost of medicine. It has given away more than $2 million in free medications and filled over 30,000 prescriptions since March 2002.

Now, Sen. Bob Schuler, R-Sycamore Township, is pushing a bill that would provide Ohioans the same opportunity.

"It sounds like a great idea. It doesn't cost anything and it helps a lot of people," Schuler said.

The bill is the first hurdle in starting a free prescription pharmacy in Ohio that would rely on donations of sample drugs from doctors and drug companies. It is against Ohio law to dispense such free medications now.

If the bill passes, it would open the door for Ohioans throughout the state to benefit from similar programs, said Liz Carter, the executive director of Cincinnati's St. Vincent de Paul.

In Northern Kentucky, the pharmacy has enrolled more than 1,100 people. Carter said she would love to see the procram expanded to Ohio.

"In my mind, even if you help one hundred more, that's a hundred people that didn't have a place to go before," she said.

There are 161,800 uninsured adults in the Tristate, according to the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati and the University of Cincinnati. And even some Cincinnati residents who have insurance still can't afford the cost of prescription medications.

Those people often resort to splitting their pills or alternating days to make them last longer. In the worst cases, people don't buy the medicine they need, said Rosana Aydt, co-director and one of the founding St. Vincent pharmacists.

"We're taking care of the people who fall through the cracks," she said.

Gerry Wever, and her husband, Walter, are one couple who said they would be homeless without the support they receive from St. Vincent's pharmacists.

Gerry, 62 is taking medicine for her thyroid, stomach, high blood pressure and nerves. Walter, 66, is a diabetic and suffers from other ailments as well.

Together, the Wevers, of Erlanger, take between 15 and 20 prescribed medications each month.

"They are why we are holding on,'' Gerry Wever said. "If it wasn't for (the pharmacy) , we couldn't survive."

E-mail amccullough@enquirer.com