AUGUSTA – Finally.

Beginning Saturday, an estimated 275,000 middle-income Mainers without prescription insurance will be able to use a first-in-the-nation prescription card that will give them discounts of 10 to 60 percent on their medicine, a smiling Gov. John Baldacci announced Tuesday.

“Maine will remain a leader in bringing lower-cost drugs to our citizens. Discounts will be available this Saturday, Jan. 17,” Baldacci said, interrupted by applause from legislators standing behind him at a State House press conference.

Brand-name prescriptions will be discounted 10 to 25 percent, generics 60 percent. The state intends to negotiate later for deeper discounts.

Applications for “Maine Rx Plus” cards have been mailed to 18,000 Mainers, and by Saturday another 73,000 applications will be in the mail, Baldacci said. As of Tuesday, 110 Maine pharmacies had agreed to honor the card, including those at Shaw’s and Hannaford grocery stores.

Not so at Rite Aid stores, though, said lobbyist Douglass Carr.

Carr said that because the state is planning to lower the fees it gives pharmacies for filling prescriptions under its MaineCare program, Rite Aid may not be able to afford to fill Maine Rx prescriptions, Carr said.

In the past nearly four years, the Maine Rx program has had many stops, and no starts, until now.

Maine Rx was passed by lawmakers in 2000. Because of repeated legal challenges by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America – challenges that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – the program had never been implemented.

Last January, Maine Assistant Attorney General Andrew Hagler stood in front of the Supreme Court justices and argued Maine’s case. In May, Maine learned the court accepted its arguments.

Some of the loudest applause at Tuesday’s press conference went to Attorney General Steve Rowe, who was House speaker when the bill was passed and who later defended Maine Rx as attorney general.

“I’ve attended a lot of press conferences over the past four years about Maine Rx and each time we said ‘This is a great day for Maine people,'” Rowe said Tuesday. “We meant it each time. The difference is today we have a program (for which) all the lights are green. … This is real. It’s a real program.”

A spokeswoman for PhRMA said Tuesday that drug makers don’t have concerns with what Maine is implementing now. However, PhRMA does oppose Maine’s plan of deeper discounts. PhRMA also opposes language that allows Maine to limit Medicaid sales from drug companies that refuse to offer Maine Rx discounts, said PhRMA’s Wanda Moebius.

Neena Quirion of the Maine Council of Senior Citizens and Joe Ditre of Maine Consumers for Affordable Health Care were among those praising the program that they said will make prescriptions more affordable for thousands.

“This is exactly what consumers want,” Ditre said. “They want the government to use its bargaining clout to lower prices for consumers. That’s why state governments have to be active.”

Ditre said consumers are upset with the new federal Medicare bill because in that law the Bush administration has prohibited the federal government from negotiating or controlling rising prescription prices.

Several people predicted that many states will pass a law similar to Maine’s. One is Hawaii, said House Speaker Pat Colwell, D-Gardiner. “As Maine Rx Plus goes, so goes the nation,” he said.

The pharmaceutical industry worked hard to keep Maine Rx from happening. “But the people of Maine have prevailed because you can’t kill an idea whose time has come,” said Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston.

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