The State Senate has advanced a proposal to let unused prescription drugs be given to people struggling to pay their prescription drug costs. Every year tens of thousands of dollars worth of perfectly good prescription drugs are destroyed because the person taking them has died or because a prescription has been changed before a supply is used up. The Senate has tentatively approved a bill letting nursing homes, hospitals, and others donate sealed, unused prescription drugs to local health departments for distribution to people in poverty. Senator Matt Bartle of Lee’s Summit says people are sometimes hurt when a society becomes overly safety-conscious. The sponsor of the bill, Senator Delbert Scott of Lowry City, says he has met with the State Health Department about the issue. He says the bureaucracy gave him a lot of reasons the idea wouldn’t work, but no suggestions how it would. His bill puts the pressure on the Department to write rules that will let the program go into effect.
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