COLUMBUS Senior drug plan gets push by Dems

Hagan's plan will be offered as an amendment to the state budget bill.
By JEFF ORTEGA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
COLUMBUS -- Gov. Bob Taft's plan to offer prescription drug discounts to senior citizens and disabled people has failed, Democratic state senators say.
State Sen. Robert F. Hagan, a Youngstown Democrat, said Wednesday he and his colleagues will push to have a bill he sponsored on prescription drug discounts for all Ohioans tucked into the two-year, $48.7 billion state budget under consideration in the Senate.
"We believe the Democratic prescription drug plan will work," Hagan said.
Hagan and Democratic leaders say folding their prescription drug plan into the budget will be among the factors they will consider to provide Democratic votes for the budget bill.
Under Hagan's bill, reintroduced this legislative session after it died in the last session, which ended in December, the state would have the power to negotiate reduced prescription drug prices for the uninsured or underinsured.
Democrats' contention
Hagan and other Democrats said their proposal would better address the issue of soaring prescription drug prices than Taft's plan, set to be unveiled soon.
Hagan said his plan wouldn't cost the state anything.
State Sen. Eric Fingerhut of Cleveland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate finance committee, said Democrats will offer Hagan's prescription drug plan as an amendment to the budget bill.
"We will offer a series of proposals," Fingerhut said.
"Any Senate [budget] plan needs to include this program for prescription drugs," said state Sen. Leigh E. Herington, a Portage County Democrat. "The governor's plan has failed."
The House passed its version of the two-year spending plan in April. It must be in place by July 1, the start of the new state fiscal year.
"The governor has done nothing," Hagan said. "He basically has ducked the issue."
"He's not paying attention to the seniors," he said.
Response
Orest Holubec, a spokesman for Taft, said the Republican governor is willing to consider Hagan's proposal but is concentrating on getting his own plan up and running.
"The governor's priority is to take care of seniors," Holubec said. "The Golden Buckeye Card program is something we know will work."
Under Taft's proposal, inserted into the current two-year budget that runs through June 30, senior citizens would present a discount card at prescription purchase.
The Ohio Department of Aging would have the authority to contract with a third party to offer the discount card through the Golden Buckeye Card program, which is open to Ohioans 60 and older and the disabled.
Discounts would range from 10 percent to 30 percent under the governor's plan, state officials said.
Holubec said the governor will unveil his program soon. Holubec said he wouldn't elaborate on the timing.
Holubec said the governor would also seek to restore about $340,000 the House cut in its version of the budget to operate the prescription drug discount program.
Senate Finance Chairman Bill M. Harris, an Ashland Republican, said Senate Republicans will consider Hagan's request to include his prescription drug bill in the budget.
"For sure, we will talk about it," Harris said.
Taft had wanted to start the Golden Buckeye prescription drug discount program in January, but the pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to participate, despite Taft's appeals.