The committee said, "There is great interest among older people and legislators in expanding eligibility" for the drug assistance program here.
Pennsylvania is deeply committed to its elderly, who make up 15.6percentt of its population, and the drug assistance program, established in 1984, has strong bipartisan support.
PARTICIPANTS: Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in either a state-run drug assistance program or Medicaid in nursing homes in New Jersey from 1994 through 2005.
New Jersey expanded its groundbreaking prescription-drug assistance program, previously limited to low-income residents, to include about 100,000 middle-income disabled and elderly people under a bill signed into law today by Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco.
Dan Leistikow, a spokesman for Gov. James E. Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat, said, "It's crystal clear that the new benefit under Medicare is not as generous as what Wisconsin seniors get" under the state's prescription drug assistance program, Senior Care.
"This is an effort to get students who would not walk to the counseling center," said Jill Richards, director of the RutgersCAPS center, which stands for counseling, ADAP (alcohol and drug assistance program) and psychiatric services.
Students must meet certain criteria, said Lisa Laitman, director of the alcohol and drug assistance program at Rutgers, and be committed to recovery; the residence hall is not for students who simply want a place to live where there is no drinking or drugs.
Examples of such initiatives include the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), funding through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS drug assistance program, and the CDC's recommendations for HIV opt-out testing.
More than a dozen states have their own drug assistance programs to help low-income patients, and they may be among the larger beneficiaries of today's agreement.
Insurers say excessive hospital charges, doctor fees and drug prices are the culprits and that drug assistance programs actually encourage greater medication use.
