We are a nation of consumers. We shop, compare costs and purchase based on price. It’s pretty tough to do that, though, when we must buy goods without first knowing the price.

Rep. Elaine Makas is fighting to give us the opportunity to compare prices on prescription drugs and we stand behind her. Unfortunately, Health and Human Service Committee members do not appear willing to do the same.

How many people drop off a prescription to be filled and are then stunned when the cash register rings up the sale? That stunned feeling can turn to anger if we learn that the exact same prescription is available at another pharmacy just down the street for less money.

Consumers could, if motivated to do so, call area pharmacies before filling a prescription and get prices, but when you’re sick or in pain, that takes more time and effort than most people are able to give.

Makas proposed a better way through a bill, LD 1987, written to provide consumers with a method to learn about drug costs so they can make intelligent buying decisions based on convenience and price before getting to the cash register.

On Wednesday, the Health and Human Services Committee – cowed by pressure from pharmacies – amended the bill, making it nearly useless.

Makas’ bill would have required chain pharmacies (with more than four locations) to report retail prices for what the state determines to be Maine’s 20 most often-purchased brand name and generic drugs. What made the bill particularly pleasing was that, although required to be posted at the pharmacy, the information would also have been compiled and posted online monthly so there would have been no need for consumers to travel from pharmacy to pharmacy to view price guides. The information would literally have been at our fingertips.

After working on the bill, the committee instead recommends that pharmacists be required to report the price only when someone asks. There is no requirement to post prices on a printed guide and no requirement to forward those prices to the state. Maine would, instead, post the names and phone numbers of every pharmacy in the state on its Web site and consumers can work the phones from there.

Here’s the argument that resulted in the weaker plan: since drug prices fluctuate so much, it would be burdensome for pharmacies to post prices once a month.

Really?

Gas stations manage to do that daily. As do grocery stores and other places where the price of commodities is volatile. The management of chain pharmacies can’t do the same?

It’s a ridiculous argument intended to guarantee business as usual, despite the pleas of consumers for more and better information about the life-sustaining prescriptions they buy.

What began as a terrific plan to provide consumers with the information they need to carefully manage their health care dollars has turned into a whisper of information for only the truly motivated consumers, and it also moved management of disseminating that information from corporate headquarters squarely on the heads of already busy pharmacists in neighborhood shops.

The destruction of this bill makes it clear that certain legislators cannot hear the demands of constituents through the din of lobbyists in the State House. What is the prescription to fix that?