According to the good guys over at the Freakonomics Blog, there is an incredible price disparity with the cost of generic Prozac at various national pharmacy chains.
Check this out:
Even once you factor in the cost of buying a membership at Costco and Sam’s Club, the price differences were astounding. Here are the prices he found at Houston stores for 90 tablets of generic Prozac:Now, of all the crazy injustices in the world, this is pretty bad. One thing it means is that a lot of elderly individuals are getting absolutely screwed. How is someone used to picking up his prescriptions at Walgreens supposed to have any idea that they charge nearly ten times the amount for the prescription than a place like Costco does? I guess we should just hope they happen to read the Freakonomics Blog. Or get a really big Social Security check.Walgreens: $117
Eckerd: $115
CVS: $115
Sam’s Club: $15
Costco: $12
Those aren’t typos. Walgreens charges $117 for a bottle of the same pills for which Costco charges $12.
And remember, these prices are for a standard bottle of 90 tablets. That says nothing of the incredible savings to be had buying drugs in bulk.
4 comments:
That just makes me wonder where Sam's Club and Costco are getting the drugs from. And whether they're real.
Not that paying 10x as much would make me any surer of that, actually ... drug counterfeiting is some scary stuff right up there with identity theft.
Probably Wal-Mart. That's my guess.
Sam's club is Wal-Mart... But you know that, and that's the joke.
My parents get most of their copious "I'm 50!" drugs at Costco... I have like a billion acetaminophens that I got at Costco for much cheaper than if I got them anywhere else. But as one person, it's a little absurd.
Here's a fun thing about the pharmacuetical industry though: the federal government subsidizes a lot of the research that goes into the development of new drugs, but when it comes time to patent the drugs, they allow the private corporations to hold them. This means that the cost to develop the drugs are socialized, but the profits of that research is privatized. Isn't that fun!?
I’ve seen ads on TV for Caduet. It has two ingredients. One is Amlodipine and the other is Atorvastatin. With my RxDrugCard I can get 30 tablets of Amlodipine for $9 and 30 tablets of Simvastatin for $9. I’ll bet they are charging more than $18 for this new drug! Don’t pressure your doctor into giving you something just because it’s new. Do your homework. Find a drug card like I did at www.rxdrugcard.com. I think that RxDrugCard.com is the best drug card available for prescription discounts.
Post a Comment