ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Some Alaska military veterans may be missing out on their free or low-cost prescription drug benefits because of a dispute over the way pills are packaged.

The problem affects veterans living in the state-run Alaska Pioneer Homes assisted living facilities who need help from staff to take their medications.

Instead of bottles, Pioneer Homes wants the medicine to come in blister packs - foil on one side, plastic on the other - with the name of the pill and patient on the package.

But the Veterans Administration said it's not set up to make blister packs.

"We don't have the space to do that. We do not have the capability to do that," said Marcia Hoffman-Devoe, spokeswoman for the agency.

Pioneer Homes cited safety concerns when it asked for the blister packs, saying bottles required nurses to transfer pills to pill boxes for residents who needed assistance. But that could lead to confusion over which pills to take.

Dave Cote, director of the Pioneer Homes, said blister packs also would allow Pioneer Homes to use nursing assistants rather than nurses.

In blister packs, "it's easy to tell if you're supposed to take a medicine on the 27th of October at noon. If it's not punched out and gone, you can assume it's not administered," Cote said.

Bea Combs, the stepdaughter of a World War II Navy veteran, said she is trying to get the problem fixed for all veterans.

Her 86-year-old stepfather, Melvin Ertwine, was affected when the Pioneer Home in Anchorage quit accepting medicine from the VA last spring. Until then, all the cost for his medication was covered by the VA and his Blue Cross retirement insurance.

"I was very upset when they notified me I had to get drugs from the Pioneer Home pharmacy," Combs said.

The change came with a bill for $120, on top of the $6,178 her family is already paying every month for Ertwine.

Veterans can get prescriptions for free if they are considered more than 50 percent disabled from their service. The most any honorably discharged veteran has to pay is $8 for a month's prescription.

Cote, however, said many veterans were not taking advantage of VA benefits but instead used private insurance or the Medicare Part D prescription benefit.

A dozen of the 36 veterans at the Pioneer Home in Anchorage were getting their medicines from the VA, he said.

A couple of veterans in Palmer may also have been getting VA medicines, but that's about the extent of the number of people affected, Cote said.

The state has Pioneer Homes in Anchorage, Palmer, Fairbanks, Juneau, Ketchikan, Palmer and Sitka. There are 114 veterans in Pioneer Home beds statewide, Cote said.