By MILT FREUDENHEIM
 

Phizer, the nation's largest drug maker, ended its widely used discount card for the elderly yesterday, leaving several hundred thousand low-income Medicare beneficiaries at least temporarily without access to reduced prices for popular medicines like the cholesterol treatment Lipitor.

The company said that it had been warning its 536,000 cardholders for months that it would discontinue the discount program on Aug. 31 and that it had advised them to sign up for various discount cards that became available under a new Medicare program that began in June.

But consumer advocates, citing the widespread confusion over the new Medicare program, had asked Pfizer to keep its discount card in place until 2006 - the year that prescription drugs will become a standard part of Medicare benefits.

"A lot of people will be left high and dry starting tomorrow," said Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.

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