This is a great opportunity for pharmacists to provide a much needed resource to our nation's medicare recipients. As our elderly continue to smoke, so do our Length of Stays in our nation's hopsitals and tax dollars due to smoking related disease states, and the increased number of Vent days in the ICU due to lung deterioration/collapse. If medicare would work on getting pharmacists PROVIDER STATUS then some of this burden could be alleviated, because we as pharmacists both in-house and in the community are the most accessable to our nation's medicare population. If the pharmaceutical manufacturers will work with us by donating there products or at least giving reduced prices to these patients this will benefit our medicare population. This is not the final end point, the cycle does not end with the patches. The continuation of counseling (where pharmacists again are in a very prominent position) and behavioral modification is just as important as the patches, becuase you can't have one without the other. Paying only for people who have a documented disease state related to smoking is a step in the right direction, but only touches a small percentage of the population that will desire to quit. With direct to consumer advertising playing such a role in today's society, we are now seeing people who have not been diagnosed with a disease state related smoking disorder that are also wishing to stop smoking.