As health care emerges as a hot-button campaign issue, seniors in the upper Midwest travel to Canada, where they pay significantly less for their medications.

By Terry M. Neal and Christina Pino-Marina

Border-hopping senior citizens in the upper Midwest who are searching for affordable medication can make for tempting icons in an election year.

Republicans have had high hopes that last year's overhaul of the federal Medicare program -- which included a new prescription drug benefit for seniors -- would help neutralize images of the elderly choosing between a month's supply of insulin and making the mortgage payment. Democrats, including Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and Minnesota Sen. Mark Dayton, remain critical of the Medicare overhaul, with Dayton using his own money to fund bus trips for seniors to fill their prescriptions for less than market rates in the United States.