ONDONDERRY, N.H. - In the first primary state, senior citizens frequently drive over the border to fill prescriptions for medicine in Canada, where the cost is often half of what is charged here.
So it's no surprise that drug prices and the competing health care plans of Al Gore and Bill Bradley are crucial issues in the race for president.
This weekend, pursuing a new line of criticism of his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Gore suggested that Bradley is a shill for the pharmaceutical industry and will not help senior citizens obtain their medicines.
In appearances in Manchester, Keene, Lawrence, Mass., and here at a conference on disabilities, Gore held himself out as someone who fights drug companies on behalf of consumers. By contrast, he said Bradley has an 18-year Senate record of helping the pharmaceutical giants at the expense of senior citizens and the poor who struggle to afford prescription drugs.
''Has he been a champion of the pharmaceutical industry? You bet. The record speaks for itself,'' Gore said at a sheet-metal company in Manchester.
The health care issue was also playing in Iowa, where Bradley argued that this country has been far too timid in broadening health coverage during an economic boom.
''We should be fixing our roofs while the sun is shining,'' Bradley said at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Despite economic growth, he said, ''I see 44 million Americans living without health insurance.''
Gore's health care plan would expand Medicare to provide prescription drugs for senior citizens covering costs up to $5,000 a year. Bradley's plan would cover everyone's prescription drugs after they paid the first $800 in drug costs annually; low-income people would be subsidized.
''I think that threshold is completely unreasonable,'' Gore said in Lawrence after receiving the endorsement of Senator John F. Kerry. ''The problem is, the people who most need the help, the majority of them, will not get it. The contrast is very striking and very clear.''
But the Bradley campaign contends that Gore's proposal, which would cover a little more than 90 percent of all seniors, does not go far enough. ''Al Gore cuts them off at their moment of greatest need, compared with Bill Bradley, who helps people with a chronic problem,'' said Mark Longabaugh, Bradley's New Hampshire director.
Gore and Bradley also disagree on the issue of generic drugs, which are less expensive for consumers. While in the Senate, Gore opposed legislation in 1982 that would have extended patents for new drugs an additional seven years, preventing them from being copied by other companies and sold more cheaply as generics. Bradley cosponsored that bill.
Between 1981 and 1991, Bradley ranked second for receiving donations from drug industry political action committees, taking in $99,707. During that period, he represented New Jersey, home to many major pharmaceutical companies. He recently said those contributions had ''zero influence'' over him.
Gore and Bradley also opposed each other in 1993 over a provision that gave drug companies tax breaks for every worker they employed in Puerto Rico. The administration tried to eliminate the loophole to save $7.3 billion over five years.
According to the General Accounting Office, the provision provided more than $71,000 in tax benefits for every worker in Puerto Rico, although the companies pay those workers about $33,757. Bradley, who said that eliminating the provision would throw Puerto Rico's economy into chaos, negotiated a compromise that cut the benefit in half.
The tension over who would do more to help people afford prescription drugs is part of a bigger battle for dominance on health care. In recent weeks, Gore has attacked Bradley relentlessly, contending that Bradley's health care plan, by eliminating Medicaid, would disproportionately hurt African-Americans and Latinos, as well as half of all people with HIV.
The Bradley campaign has responded by saying that Gore's charges are baseless and employed only to scare people from Bradley.
On health care, Bradley last week won the support of Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey. ''I do get a little hot under the collar coming from individuals who were responsible for the failure of health care reform in 1994 and then gave up on it,'' Kerrey said. ''In 1995, what was the White House doing? They were triangulating.''
Kerrey took umbrage at Gore's assertion that Bradley would hurt low-income blacks by eliminating Medicaid. ''Does he say what the welfare reform bill did?'' Kerrey said of legislation that was supported by Gore and signed by Clinton into law. ''It eliminated AFDC. It eliminated a 60-year commitment to support dependent families.''
