Dear Editor:
New Jersey seniors won a great victory in the battle for prescription drug coverage with passage in the United States Senate of legislation to expand Medicare to include drug coverage. Senator Frank Lautenberg and I added an amendment to the bill that will protect and expand our state’s already strong prescription drug programs, PAAD and Senior Gold.
New Jersey’s existing pharmaceutical assistance program is the oldest and one of the largest state programs in the country. PAAD and Senior Gold provide comprehensive prescription drug coverage to more than 200,000 low and moderate-income seniors and disabled people.
The program was at risk and the alternative unacceptable — forcing all New Jersey seniors to have their drug benefits thrown into the hands of private insurers. But we took steps to ensure that state pharmacy assistance programs like PAAD will be able to administer the Medicare drug benefit.
The Corzine-Lautenberg amendment inserted into the bill provides $310 million of federal funds to the state’s senior prescription drug benefits program. This money will not only allow the state to continue to provide excellent prescription drug coverage to seniors, but be able to expand the program as well.
As always, the goal is top notch are for Garden State seniors. The language we won will give us hundreds of millions of dollars a year to preserve and strengthen New Jersey’s PAAD program so we can turn PAAD and Senior Gold into Senior Platinum.
Jon S. Corzine
United States Senator