10 Ways To Save On Your Drugs: How to Cut Your Medication Costs By 30% or more.

Medications rise at the rate of 7% per year while inflation is one-third that rate.  But there are ways to economize sensibly. The following tips are intended to provide medication purchase strategies that you should discuss with your doctor before pursuing on your own and are not intended as medical advice.  If you substitute medications, under-use medications, or share medications with others, you could end up aggravating your medical conditions or worse -- inviting expensive emergency medical intervention.  Therefore, discuss any changes in medication purchase strategies with your physician and your pharmacist prior to acting on any of these money-saving ideas.  It is the intention of Alamar Healthcare, Inc. and its providers, as well as author Marlene Allan, to comply with all local, state and federal laws in distributing this information.

1. Drug stores and grocery pharmacy departments may offer coupons and sales.      Keep an eye out for coupons and sales offered by your pharmacy or grocery store. Ask your pharmacist if you qualify for any discounts.

2. Reconsider whether to buy medications from your doctor; ask for trial samples for free.  Whenever possible, we offer patients a trial sample course of a medication to make sure that the medication is effective and well-accepted by the body. We don’t sell our patients medications because most doctors view this as a potential conflict of interest and because drugs expire quickly on the doctor’s shelf.  Besides, you can get medications must less expensively by shopping around.

3. Price breaks when you by larger quantities of ongoing medications.  For those of you with ongoing chronic conditions, you may wish to buy a larger supply of your medications, e.g. 90 or 180 day supply, if your drug insurance plan reimburses for this or if you pay cash.  Check your local Sam’s Club or Costco to see if they carry what you need at bulk pricing.

4. Investigate Health Savings Accounts.  Most HSAs, HRAs, and other health savings plans have high deductibles.  However, one feature that is very attractive about them is that a “nest egg” is built up each year from which you can withdraw funds for medications depending on the plan.  That means that once a cash nest egg is built up by you or your employer, certain medications may be covered 100% without deductible.  These federally-regulated health plans are generally tax-deferred as well so there may be tax benefits to using them.

5. Buy mail order but Patient Beware!  You can research legitimate mail order pharmacies online and through mail order catalogs.  Just make sure the pharmacies dispense  FDA-approved medications with street addresses that lie within   the continental United States.  There are a lot of counterfeit drugs out there that are ineffective, toxic, or are dangerous for your condition  and   most of these are sold from outside of U.S., away from the protective, prying eyes of the FDA.   PharmacyChecker.com is one company that tries to root out the bad guys both in the U.S.A. and abroad.

6. Compare and switch:  Brand Name, Generic and Over-the-Counter brands.  Substituting generic and Over-the-counter drugs sometimes makes a lot of sense.  However, every drug reacts differently in the body of every patient.  So, to be safe, check with your doctor or pharmacist to make sure that generic or Over-the-counter substitutes for Brand Name drugs have the same active ingredients in the same strength and received by the body in the same way (i.e., are “bio-equivalent”).  For example, you may be accustomed to taking the Advil brand of Ibuprofen, but if Ibuprofen is found in some other brand (e.g. Motrin) for less money, you may just have found a bargain.  However, substituting Tylenol for Motrin is not an equivalent swap—Tylenol is an Acetaminophen , not an Ibuprofen, so swapping one for the other may be a poor choice if you have certain medical conditions or react badly to the swapped choice. Also, verify that only the inactive inert ingredients (filler substances) differ, not the “active” ingredients. 

7. Don’t skip your medications—consider pill splitting.  Talk to both your doctor and your pharmacist about cutting pills in half.  Many, but not all pills lend themselves to this practice.  Some pharmacies, especially mail order pharmacies, charge identically for pills of regular strength and those of double strength, e.g. 10 mg and 20 mg doses.  Splitting these pills might make sense to you and your doctor or pharmacist, but be especially careful not to split pills that are “Enteric-coated” to restrict absorption of the drug in the stomach as it passes to the small intestine.  Also, do not split pills designed for timed release.  Capsules really should not be emptied and split either.  Plastic pill cutter devices are sold at local pharmacies.

8. Check out MedTipster and PharmacyChecker.com !
Medtipster.com website may prove to be an interesting tool. View it online from home or on free local library computers.  You enter the Brand name of your medication and your zip code and the software calculates which local pharmacies and membership drug stores have the generic drug or the Brand Name at a more affordable price.  Verify these prices by phone before showing up to buy. PharmacyChecker.com seeks out legitimate Canadian and American mail order/internet pharmacy marketers and lists rogue/bad guy sources to avoid.

9.  Get Medication Assistance Subsidies If You Cannot Afford Your Medications.     The Prescription Drug Assistance programs help qualifying patients who do not have prescription drug coverage to get the medicines they need free or at low cost.  There are also programs for the underinsured and for those whose incomes are so low that access to medications are impossible regardless of insurance.  Contact these agencies online or through your public library.  Check out http://www.pparx.org/ for the Partnership for Prescription Assistance   Also try http://www.rxassist.org/ for their Patient Assistance Program information.  For very low income patients, particularly those with little savings, contact Medi-Cal for medication subsidies; they serve children, adults, and low-income seniors on Medicare:   Medi-Cal, call 866  904-9362.

10.  Check out our website for other money-saving ideas at  www.alamarhealth.com Self-Help Pages.

Copyright 2009.  Marlene Allan.  All Rights Reserved Worldwide.  Reprinted by permission.