Howardsend2
08-23-2005, 11:28 PM
Drug card gives $3M dose of savings
BY JENNIFER MALONEY
STAFF WRITER
August 24, 2005
Leonard Gold buys three drugs for his wife every month -- Plavix, a blood thinner; Fosamax, for bone loss; and Aricept, for memory loss.
Gold, 86, of Oceanside, could sign up for a Medicare discount prescription drug plan. But the paperwork overwhelms him. So he uses a Nassau County discount card, which saves him $50 per month off his $400 bill.
Small but significant savings such as this have put back more than $3 million into the pockets of Nassau residents since the introduction of the NassauRx card last year, said county Comptroller Howard Weitzman.
The NassauRx card offers prescription drug discounts for Nassau residents who do not have health insurance or whose insurance does not offer prescription drug coverage.
Some Nassau residents lauded the program yesterday, saying the card helped bridge the gap where their insurance plans fell short.
But Betty Bellin, 72, of Freeport, said that when her card arrived in the mail last year, she threw it out.
It didn't offer nearly as good a discount as she could find by ordering online from Canada, said Bellin, who takes drugs for breast cancer and osteoporosis.
One of her drugs costs almost $1,000 in the United States, and only $500 in Canada, she said.
Now Bellin orders through the TogetherRx program, an American discount plan launched by 10 pharmaceutical companies, which matches the Canadian price for her drug.
Weitzman, a Democrat, has previously said the NassauRx program costs taxpayers nothing. But after his Republican political opponent Donald Clavin said the comptroller's office had paid auditors to plug the Rx card at street fairs, Weitzman conceded that he had used some taxpayer money to promote it.
Calling his program a success, Weitzman said it has been imitated in Rockland and Westchester. New York City, Los Angeles and Montgomery County, Md., are developing similar programs, he said.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said he hopes in January to launch a different kind of program. He would seek bulk discounts by pooling uninsured and underinsured residents with county employees and Medicaid recipients into one program.
According to the Health and Welfare Council of Long Island, 135,051 people in Nassau and 152,067 in Suffolk have no health insurance.
But the Nassau Suffolk Hospital Council puts the numbers much higher, with an estimated total of 500,000 uninsured residents in Long Island.
Nassau residents have filled more than 180,000 discount prescriptions since July 2004, Weitzman said.
For more information, or to order a card, call 1-877-321-2652 or visit https://nassaurx.advancerx.com.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
Once again Howard caught in a lie
It cost the taxpayers nothing....that is until someone checked.
How much OT was paid to these auditors sitting in street fairs?
No wonder the payroll scandals happen, Howies got the staff janding out his picture!!!
BY JENNIFER MALONEY
STAFF WRITER
August 24, 2005
Leonard Gold buys three drugs for his wife every month -- Plavix, a blood thinner; Fosamax, for bone loss; and Aricept, for memory loss.
Gold, 86, of Oceanside, could sign up for a Medicare discount prescription drug plan. But the paperwork overwhelms him. So he uses a Nassau County discount card, which saves him $50 per month off his $400 bill.
Small but significant savings such as this have put back more than $3 million into the pockets of Nassau residents since the introduction of the NassauRx card last year, said county Comptroller Howard Weitzman.
The NassauRx card offers prescription drug discounts for Nassau residents who do not have health insurance or whose insurance does not offer prescription drug coverage.
Some Nassau residents lauded the program yesterday, saying the card helped bridge the gap where their insurance plans fell short.
But Betty Bellin, 72, of Freeport, said that when her card arrived in the mail last year, she threw it out.
It didn't offer nearly as good a discount as she could find by ordering online from Canada, said Bellin, who takes drugs for breast cancer and osteoporosis.
One of her drugs costs almost $1,000 in the United States, and only $500 in Canada, she said.
Now Bellin orders through the TogetherRx program, an American discount plan launched by 10 pharmaceutical companies, which matches the Canadian price for her drug.
Weitzman, a Democrat, has previously said the NassauRx program costs taxpayers nothing. But after his Republican political opponent Donald Clavin said the comptroller's office had paid auditors to plug the Rx card at street fairs, Weitzman conceded that he had used some taxpayer money to promote it.
Calling his program a success, Weitzman said it has been imitated in Rockland and Westchester. New York City, Los Angeles and Montgomery County, Md., are developing similar programs, he said.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said he hopes in January to launch a different kind of program. He would seek bulk discounts by pooling uninsured and underinsured residents with county employees and Medicaid recipients into one program.
According to the Health and Welfare Council of Long Island, 135,051 people in Nassau and 152,067 in Suffolk have no health insurance.
But the Nassau Suffolk Hospital Council puts the numbers much higher, with an estimated total of 500,000 uninsured residents in Long Island.
Nassau residents have filled more than 180,000 discount prescriptions since July 2004, Weitzman said.
For more information, or to order a card, call 1-877-321-2652 or visit https://nassaurx.advancerx.com.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
Once again Howard caught in a lie
It cost the taxpayers nothing....that is until someone checked.
How much OT was paid to these auditors sitting in street fairs?
No wonder the payroll scandals happen, Howies got the staff janding out his picture!!!