Nine top pharmaceutical companies annouced a new prescription drug savings card on Jan 11th 2005 in an attempt to help reduce costs for the roughly 45 million Americans without health insurance. According to a Reuters article

It offers uninsured patients discounts on more than 275 brand-name drugs, compared to 155 drugs for the Medicare version. Both cards tout savings of between 20 and 40 percent on brand-name drugs.

To qualify, individual patients without health insurance must earn $30,000 or less and be younger than 65 and a legal U.S. resident. Income requirements are adjusted based on family size; for example, a family of four must earn $60,000 or less.

This is yet another program that the pharmaceutical companies have come up with recently to help Americans without insurance afford presciption drugs. This combined card makes things much less confusing for the average consumer. Also according to Reuters

Most drugmakers also offer free or discounted drugs to certain poorer patients through their patient assistance programs. Critics say the programs can be too difficult to enroll in and do not serve enough needy patients.

It still seems that no matter what the pharmaceutical companies do lately, their actions are still viewed with skepticism. Most reviews of the programs offered state that these companies still aren't doing enough to help the uninsured and poor. The bottom line is, pharmaceutical companies are still businesses trying to survive in a capitalist market. Pharmaceuticals are still a high risk industry and any basic economic class will teach you high risk investments need a high rate of return to attract investors.