For years, Chellie Pingree, Majority Leader in the Maine Senate, watched her elderly constituents struggle to pay rising prescription-drug bills. At the same time, Maine's spending on a 25-year-old state drug benefit—which subsidizes just 14 common drugs for very poor seniors only—was spiraling out of control. Pingree thought: Why not use the state's purchasing power to wangle discounts from pharmaceutical houses and pass the savings on to the elderly?
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