A coalition of businesses announced the formation of a new statewide pool Wednesday to negotiate and potentially lower the costs of prescription drugs for thousands of Wisconsin residents.

The pool, called WisconsinRx, expects to negotiate discounts ranging from five to 15 percent on prescription-drug costs, executive director of Wisconsin Education Association Trust Al Jacobs said. WEA Trust is an insurance corporation providing medical coverage for 350 school districts across the state.

WisconsinRx includes the Employer Health Care Alliance Cooperative, the Fond du Lac Area Businesses on Health and the WEA Trust. The coalition currently has 260,000 employee members and a goal of expanding to one million members in a year, organizers said.

“It is a private sector solution that will save businesses in the state, large or small, significant money on their drug plans,” Fond du Lac Area Business chief executive officer Jerry Popowski said.

The coalition plans to develop an independent panel of Wisconsin doctors and pharmacists to review which prescription medicines are most effective and create a preferred-drug list. Through this panel, the pool will work to educate member organizations and their employees about making more cost-conscious decisions about which medications to take to treat certain conditions and diseases.

“WisconsinRx will act as a watchdog so that a decision to place a drug on the preferred list will be based on sound clinical evidence and not how much money a drug company spends to advertise the drug,” Alliance Cooperative chief executive officer Chris Queram said.

WiscosinRx hired a Dallas-based pharmacy benefits manager, AdvancePCS, to negotiate volume discounts and cheaper prices from pharmaceutical companies.

Fees for joining the group have not yet been set, but Jacobs said they would be low and not present a financial barrier to any organization that wishes to join the not-for-profit coalition.

“This statewide purchasing pool, run by the private sector, gives WisconsinRx extraordinary clout as we deal with rising drug costs,” said Sandy Dolister, Senior Director of Employee Benefits for Madison Gas & Electric.

Dolister added that the new coalition would allow Wisconsin to become a national leader in finding new ideas to fight and control “spiraling” health-care costs.

“The aggressive prices we were able to get will result in lower prescription-drug costs and more affordable prescription-drug plans and will save our group and all WiscosinRx groups some serious money,” Jacobs said.

The Trust, the Alliance and FABOH collaborated for more than a year and a half to decide the best way to address the problem of escalating drug costs.

However, the plan is not expected to go into effect until Jan. 1, 2004. This may render some member companies with health-insurance contracts unable to take advantage of the group’s benefits until the middle of next year.