Medicare still considers her a transplant patient and, as such, helps to pay the $800 a month in anti-rejection medicine she needs to keep her kidneys working properly.

But her status as a transplant patient ends after the third year, meaning Medicare will no longer pay for her costly prescriptions.

If Bost can’t afford the $800 a month in medicine, she will be forced to go back on dialysis at $5,000 a month. Ironically, Medicare would pay for the dialysis.

Bost told U.S. Rep. Mel Watt Wednesday that it doesn’t make much sense. Here’s a case in which Medicare’s failure to pay for prescription drugs could end up costing the federal health insurance program a whole lot more, she said.

Watt agreed, noting that he and other congressmen are realizing that the government often ends up spending more when seniors are hospitalized than it would if Medicare had paid for the prescription drugs they needed in the first place.

Watt spoke Wednesday morning to a group of about 50 seniors at the Rufty-Holmes Senior Center in Salisbury as part of a daylong visit to Rowan County. Medicare and prescription drugs dominated his conversation with the older group.

A chorus of “Amen” went up from the seniors when Watt, a Charlotte Democrat, told them that the burning question with seniors is, “Why doesn’t Medicare pay for prescription drugs?”

Decades ago when Medicare was first established, Americans’ use of prescriptions drugs was minor compared to today, Watt said. It never occurred to the government that paying for them would be an issue.

“When I got sick, the standard treatment was castor oil,” Watt said.

With medical advances and the burgeoning reliance on pharmaceuticals, a Medicare patient now pays an average of $525 a year for prescription drugs. Many pay $3,000 to $5,000 a year. Watt said.

“It’s a major burden on seniors,” he added.

This year, President Clinton proposed expanding Medicare to pay up to $1,700 a year for a patient’s prescriptions.

That was revised a bit later to include some provisions for what Watt called “catastrophic circumstances.” Republicans have offered a more modest proposal, Watt said, and other variations also are being considered.

Providing Medicare coverage for prescription drugs will be “very costly,” Watt warned. But he said the government also could save money, not to mention easing seniors’ financial burden and improving their health.

Effective drug treatment of Alzheimer’s patients could keep some 10 percent of those people out of nursing homes that Medicare pays for, Watt said.

One study shows that 6.4 percent of all hospitalizations for people 65 and older are connected to prescription drug issues. Seventy percent of those cases could be avoided if those seniors could afford or obtain necessary medication, Watt said.

Another hopeful side effect, Watt suggested, might be that the federal government’s large purchasing power through Medicare would drive the price of drugs down, as it did for veterans who pay less for drugs than seniors.

For now, congressmen are looking for a “level of consensus” — a reasonable proposal, Watt said, that will benefit seniors without breaking the bank.

Watt said he definitely will vote for a prescription drug benefit and urged the seniors in his audience to write or call other members of Congress.