What a mess former acting Gov. Jane Swift and the Legislature left behind on prescription drugs. New Gov. Mitt Romney and this year's session of the Legislature ought to consider repealing it and devising a better plan.

The new year has been decidedly UNHAPPY for thousands of Massachusetts' sick and elderly citizens. Since Jan. 1, they've been socked $1.30 a prescription - which will add up to hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year for many who can't afford it - under a controversial new state tax that no one in government ever said they had to pay.

Howls of rage are justifiably being raised across the state. Attorney General Tom Reilly has put his foot down, vigorously scolding big pharmacy chains for deceptively posting signs at the counter that tell customers this is a tax on THEM(not an assessment on the drug store).

Get those signs down or face the music, Reilly warned the five biggies - CVS, Wal-Mart, Brooks, Walgreens and Stop and Shop - in a press conference last week and in letters from his office.

"CVS and other pharmacies are passing the buck. It is particularly burdensome on the elderly who have to scratch for every dollar," Reilly said.

House Ways and Means Chairman John Rogers (D-Norwood) also said yesterday, in a letter to House members, that the pharmacies should "cease and desist," lest the Legislature "be forced to repeal the statute" and end state Medicaid "dispensing payments" of $3 to $5 per perscription to the drug stores.

Sadly, the way the tax is being handled subverts its whole purpose. It was aimed at offsetting a revenue crisis and helping some of the ailing poor remain on Medicaid. Yet other sick people who have private insurance - but in many cases not a lot more income - are being hit with an onerous new tax.

As Phil Mamber, president of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, so succinctly told the Herald's Jennifer Heldt Powell, "A lot of people have eight, 10 or 12 prescriptions and this is a real boot in the butt."

Now, some customers are purchasing their prescriptions online. And why not? A mail order house in Canada or Cleveland is unlikely to be collecting that little $1.30-a-pop bounty for Massachusetts.

One discount operation already is advertising that it will absorb the tax and not charge its customers the extra money. And that's likely to draw even more business from the independent pharmacies whose profit margins on prescriptions already are LESSthan the $1.30 they'd have to shell out to the state themselves if they can't pass on the cost.

So, it may well be time to euthanize this turkey and find a new - and fairer - way to cure the $36 million Medicaid dilemma it was intended to resolve.

Conveniently, a remedy may well be at hand in a repeal bill that state Sen. Dick Moore (D-Uxbridge), Senate chairman of the joint Health Care Commitee, has refiled.

Moore's measure does more than just end what he calls "the RX Tax." It provides for full disclosure by the pharmaceutical industry of its wholesale costs and manufacturer prices and proof of its estimates of profit margins.

That way, Moore suggests, a fair "dispensing fee" from the state can be established for druggists serving Medicaid patients.

Moore warned that a new get-tough law to ban the pharmacies from passing on the $1.30 tax to their customers "would undoubtedly kill the remaining independent pharmacies and could result in financial stress for the chains." Better to just repeal it and start again, preferably through "some broad-based revenue source," he said.

Ah, there's the rub. Voters in 2002 showed no appetite for some new broad-based tax, as an astonishing 45 percent voted to abolish the state income tax. And Rogers indicated that Moore's plan wouldn't fly in the House; that a repeal of the $1.30-a-pop tax would blow a $72 million hole in the upcoming budget. (That's based on the $36 million the tax would raise, plus a $36 million Medicaid match by the federal government.)

Still, this thing is a tax, even if Swift termed it a "pharmacy assessment" and Rogers calls it a "business fee." The feds call it a tax. It sure FEELSlike a tax to the people who pay it. And Romney, who detests new taxes, should have his deep thinkers find a way to get rid of this one, even if he didn't create the monster.

Wayne Woodlief is a member of the Boston Herald staff.

Caption: TOM REILLY: His shot of populist outrage is refreshing.

Copyright 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.