The ruling allows health plans to exclude sexual dysfunction drugs from prescription benefits.

In addition to prescription benefits for Medicare recipients, this broader inequity must be addressed.

The auto makers' costs for prescription benefits are also rising 10 percent to 18 percent a year, the companies said.

"What does he expect from a plan that raises drug company profits more than senior citizens' prescription benefits?"

How, without a new premium increase, do you add a prescription benefit to Medicare, which already faces insolvency in eight years?

If your insurance policy has a prescription benefit, your co-pay will be the same no matter where you shop.

Democratic senators had insisted on an expansive program of prescription benefits that would have cost the federal government $594 billion from 2005 to 2012.

But an insurance industry study has since found that the cost of extending the prescription benefit would be only about $16 per employee each year.

"Patients say, I have a prescription benefit on my insurance, why should I pay for it over the counter?"

Q. What about current proposals to provide Medicare coverage for prescription benefits?