Several months ago, Government promised to make prescription drugs available to senior citizens at lower prices.

It has come through with the promise, announcing on Friday that senior citizens who have health insurance through the Government-run Health Insurance Programme (HIP) will receive an annual $1,000 prescription drug benefit.

This is good news for seniors, who face major problems with health care if the are unable to remain on major medical plans once they retire.

The annual cost of the programme is estimated at $2 million a year, and as a result all members of HIP, retired or otherwise, will see their premiums increase by $4.42 to $133.20 a month, which seems a small price to pay.

This is about the most Government can do through the HIP plan, which in spite of this and other benefit improvements, remains less generous than most private health insurance schemes.

But it will not solve the overall problems with health insurance, which are two-fold.

The first is the unfairness of senior citizens finding their health insurance benefits being reduced just when they need them most - in old age. The second is that health care costs have been escalating much faster than the overall cost of living for the past decade.

Many people - in private and public health insurance schemes - have seen their premiums increase dramatically in the last few years to cover these costs. For senior citizens on fixed incomes, it is much harder to keep pace and sometimes, as reported far too often in this newspaper in recent months, they must decide between buying food or refilling their prescriptions.

That is not to say that there are not answers to the problem. Many are contained in the raft of studies that have been done in the last decade, including the Oughton Report, the Arthur Andersen report and a more recent survey on medical costs conducted by Ernst & Young. Just this year, the Finance Ministry began another study.

The 1996 Oughton Report recommended that a health care council be formed. Legislation for this was finally passed in April this year, but the Council itself is still not appointed.

This council would be responsible for overseeing the Island's overall health policy and could recommend, and if necessary force, changes where it is not working. It could also set priorities for the Health Ministry and hospitals, promote preventative health measures and review the cost and performance of health insurers, doctors and dentists, pharmacies, nursing homes and other organisations involved in health case.

Whatever changes are made to health care will come at a cost (as demonstrated by the increase in the prescription drugs benefit), and as politically unpalatable as it is, the public needs to start paying those costs now in order to fund health costs in the future.