County mulls prescription discount card

ALBANY — The Dougherty County Commission heard from two men affiliated with a prescription discount card program Monday who are vying to earn the support of the commission and gain footing in the community.

Data RX is one of three discount card providers that the county is considering promoting primarily for those uninsured and underinsured in the community.

According to Data RX President and CEO Dan Chapman, his company provides an average discount of 53 percent on prescription drugs with generics and less popular drugs fetching discounts as high as 70 percent.

“It’s a win, win, win,” he said. “It makes the cardholder happy, the local pharmacists happy because they get the business and the county happy because they can provide relief for constituents.”

First spurred by an inquiry from Commissioner John Hayes, the county has been researching prescription drug card programs which provide varying degrees of savings on prescription drugs and is geared primarily for those in the general public who are uninsured or underinsured.

“I feel as though that we have to provide some level of relief to the households in this community who are struggling to pay for their prescriptions,” Hayes said.

“We have to find some way to push back on health care costs. If we can reduce prescription drug costs than it will at least provide some level of relief that people in this community are burdened with.”

The county has already discussed using a program that has been promoted by the National Association of Counties (NaCo) and was made aware of a third provider through the Medical Association of Georgia.

County Administrator Richard Crowdis said that the county was poised to endorse or support a plan several years ago, but stopped when there were concerns raised by local pharmacists that the plan the county was going to support would strip them of business by soliciting and promoting mail-order prescriptions.

Additionally, Crowdis has been told that some cards feature the logo of certain chain pharmacies and that would also hurt local pharmacists.

The Data RX program does not promote mail-order prescriptions, Chapman said, and doesn’t sell its users’ information to third parties.

All of the prescription discount card programs come at no cost to the county or general public.

Additionally, Chapman and Joe Mengoni, the chairman of the board for the company, told commissioners that they would give 25 cents to the county each time a person from Dougherty County uses one of their cards.

What they would like, they say, is for the county to either support or endorse their program and give them permission to distribute the cards throughout the county.

After hearing their presentation, the commission took a consensus to get Crowdis to do research into the NaCo plan and, if possible, provide a side-by-side comparison of all three plans before making a decision.