This paper was jointly prepared by the Maine Rural Health Research Center and the RUPRI (Rural Policy Research Institute) Rural Health Panel to offer a rural perspective on the current debate over the design and implementation of a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Background information on rural Medicare beneficiaries’ need for, and access to, prescription drugs is provided, along with a set of rural-oriented principles for use in evaluating how different prescription drug proposals may meet the needs of rural beneficiaries. These principles are
applied to six proposals introduced between April and August 2000.
This report was written by Health Panel Members: Andrew Coburn, Erika Ziller, Charles Fluharty, J. Patrick Hart, A. Clinton MacKinney, Timothy McBride, Keith Mueller, Rebecca Slifkin, Mary Wakefield; published August 31, 2000.
