ROSSVILLE — The lunch talk at the Rossville Senior Center is about family, friends and the good old days and the not-so-good new days of expensive prescription medicines.
Many at the center grew up and grew old together in this rural Shawnee County community and have shared sorrows and joys through the decades.
Mary and Maurice Montgomery's situation is familiar to many in the room. They live on a fixed income that seems to shrink as their prescription costs rise.
She's 81, with heart problems, and spends $200 a month for medicine. He's 88, uses a walker to get around and estimates his pills cost $100 per month. They pay for their drugs themselves.
"It's quite an effort sometimes. I take quite a bit of medicine, you know," she said. "We've had the money so far, but we don't spend money like a lot of people. We have to watch every dime we spend. Otherwise, we'd be asking for help."
Clarence and Rita Wehner are both 81. He has heart problems, and she had two strokes last year. Between them, they have 19 prescriptions which he estimates cost $7,000 a year. They, too, lack insurance for the drugs.
"Nobody is going to take you on when you are using a lot of medicines," he said. "We do have enough to pay for it, but I hate to give it all to the drug companies."
Doug Perine has run the local drug store for a quarter century, and about half his customers are elderly.
"In general, prescription drugs have gone up about 10 percent a year for probably the last 10 or 20 years," he said.
The Rossville couples are just the kinds of citizens the Legislature intended to help when it created the Senior Pharmacy Assistance Program. But future help is uncertain as lawmakers eye the program's trust fund as a possible source of revenue for other programs.
Elderly most affected
Nearly 360,000 Kansans 13 percent of the state's population are age 65 and older.
"As people live longer, there are new drugs to keep us healthy. The costs are increasing, and the need for different types of medication is increasing," said Ernest Kutzley, associate state director of AARP, the national advocacy group for people 50 and older.
AARP has predicted an 11 percent to 18 percent rise in prescription drug costs this year in the United States.
Among those most affected by those increases are elderly people who have fixed incomes Social Security, pensions and maybe some savings but no insurance for prescription drugs. Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, doesn't cover drug costs.
"We see people who have to make the choice of taking all their drugs or having enough money for food and utilities," Kutzley said.
Medicaid, a state health insurance program for the needy, provides some help but carries restrictions.
For instance, an elderly couple drawing Social Security benefits can have all their drug costs picked up by Medicaid if their total household income is less than $8,591.
Fund eases costs
But with more income, the couple must spend some of their money first. If total income is $15,000, they must spend $534 per month before Medicaid picks up the additional costs.
Last year, the state began helping seniors pay for their drugs through its Senior Pharmacy Assistance Trust Fund, created with extra Medicaid reimbursements from the federal government.
Interest on the fund, which now stands at about $60 million, helped 1,000 low-income elderly Kansans with prescription reimbursements of up to $1,200 a year.
Advocates estimate 15,000 elderly Kansans would qualify for the assistance, and they want to see the program grow and improve.
At the same time, however, some legislators question whether the program will survive this year's budget blues. The trust fund's money could help fill a $426 million gap between expected the state's expected revenues and its spending commitments in the budget year that starts July 1.
'We need to keep our commitment'
"It's certainly not my choice, but all parts of the budget are on the table," said House Appropriations Chairman Kenny Wilk, R-Lansing.
Some flatly reject the suggestion.
"I'm outraged by the idea. We made certain promises to our seniors, and we need to keep our commitment," said Rep. Carlos Mayans, R-Wichita.
Other legislators hope the federal government will solve the problem. But some say that's like waiting for a train that never arrives.
Of all the lawmakers, Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia, probably knows best the dilemma the elderly face. He's a physician, and two-thirds of his patients are 65 and older.
"There's not a week that goes by that I don't see a patient who can't afford the medication they have to take," Barnett said.
Whenever he can, Barnett prescribes the cheaper generic medications.
"Chemically, it's the same as the brand names. One has a patent, and the other doesn't," he said.
He often suggests getting prescriptions filled by mail order from Canada, often for half the price in the United States.
"For some, it's the only way they can afford it, but it does hurt the local pharmacist," Barnett said.
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