 Prescription drugs can be a big part of health care costs, especially for those without health insurance. Cumberland County is participating in a free discount prescription drug program to help residents save 20% of the retail price of those drugs. Leslie McVane spoke with County Commissioner Steve Gordon about the program. Well Steve, the Cumberland County commissioners have decided to sort of get a little more involved in the prescription discount card program, which has been around for a couple of years. But I didn't know anything about it, so tell our audience a little bit more about what this means. Well first I really appreciate the opportunity to do this because it is for our citizens. It is something that functions along with the national counties and they created this program where if you're uninsured with prescriptions you can get this card and we're distributing it through the local town offices. There's no fee, there's no enrollment, you can use it immediately and oddly enough if it's a human based prescription that a pet has, it'll cover that too. That's amazing. And it's about a 20% discount. Which is huge when you're uninsured and you have to have a prescription of some kind. The savings is considerable. Well it is, I mean I take a prescription myself and I've been to the drugstore and I've seen people paying $100 for prescriptions. Well if they had this it would be $20 less. That's a lot of money. That is a lot of money, that $20 can go to their rent. Right. So now this has been going on for a couple of years. It's a national program started by county commissioners. At the national level there is an organization, NACO, which is all the commissioners together and they developed this program and put it forth for the counties. It in fact is statewide so if somebody happens to hear this and they go to a town office in Cumberland County and they live in another county it's fine. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And it costs absolutely nothing for them. Again there's no fees, there's no enrollment, you can use it immediately. It's just a great program for those that are uninsured. Now you said it's been going on, you've had this for a couple of years here in Maine, but it's just been not widely... Well my understanding was it was distributed to the communities and the county didn't pick up the opportunity to advertise it or make it better known. There was a push at one time and it just didn't come forth. We're thanks to a program like this, we'll do that. We're also going to try to put it on the public channels through a slide so that they'll get that and make sure that people just start being able to talk about it. Hopefully we can get some ads and some papers too. Are you going to be putting any flyers in tax bills or anything like that? Maybe not allowed. That's not allowed. It's a good idea though. Absolutely, it's a great idea. This may be the difference between life and death for some people. Well, seriously if you have to have the prescription and you can't eat. And you just say, I'm going to eat instead of have the prescription. Right, or you'll get people that will only take half their prescription because that's all they can afford. This gives them the opportunity to get back on track at least somewhat and take advantage of the medication so they can get their health back. And there's no question with the pharmacies, they're all set to handle this. Well, that's an interesting point. If somebody finds a pharmacy that questions this, have them call the county and we'll make sure that they get contacted and know how to use it. But what I've been told is no, there's not a problem. There shouldn't be any problem at all. Now we've got to wrap this up, but to get one of these, you said that the town offices, the town halls, the city halls. Are you also putting it in non-profit agencies, in agencies where people might go who are looking for work who may be uninsured? Well, we're trying to get the towns to distribute it to their offices where people come in and get some welfare or some assistance. That's one. We're talking in fact with a couple of the federal credit unions to see if they'll allow it to be distributed there. A couple of them are looking into doing that. And the wider the distribution, the better off it will be. Well, maybe we should have some here because we have people who are sort of hard on their luck coming in and looking for something to do in the meantime. Well, please, I'd be very appreciative. An outlet for you. Thank you. For more information, contact. Cumberland County. Or they can contact me, Steve Gordon. Thanks, Steve. This was great. It's a wonderful program. Thank you. I'm glad it's out there. So are we. Thank you.