A major drug company’s touting its own prescription-drug benefit, since Washington hasn’t yet produced one within the Medicare program. Pfizer has introduced a program it calls the Share Card to help Iowans and other seniors afford the prescription medications they may not be able to afford. Spokesman Forest Harper says four and-a-half million Americans have very low incomes and no prescription-drug coverage, the conditions that qualify them for the Share Card program. In Iowa alone, he says the company’s enrolled 8-thousand, 300 eligible people to use the program and figures it could serve another 105-thousand people it hopes to contact. Harper says the 8300 people in the program have used it to buy some 60-thousand prescriptions which he figures total a value of four and-a-half Million dollars in pharmaceuticals. Harper says some 17-million Americans have no prescription-drug coverage and the pharmaceutical company’s card program is an effort to help some of them. To qualify, you have to be a Medicare enrollee, make 18-thousand a year or less as a single or 24-thousand or below for a couple, and have no other drug coverage like Medicaid or veterans benefits. There are limits to the program — among other things, it only covers drugs made by the Pfizer company. But Harper says the qualified user gets a card usable at 58-thousand drugstores nationwide, that sets a rock-bottom price for the drugs their doctor’s prescribed. For just $15 per prescription, Share Card members can get up to a 30-day supply of their medication, by simply taking your care and prescription to the pharmacist. It’s $15 each so for three prescriptions you’d pay just 45 dollars. For more information on the programs and its other conditions, or to register, you can call 1-800-717-6005 or go to the website http://www.pfizersharecard.com/
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