![]() ![]() Instead, they focus on low-cost generic drugs. Here’s what else we found in our check of online pharmacies.įive of the sites we reviewed-ScriptCo, Ro Pharmacy, Honeybee, GeniusRx, and Cost Plus-are not full-service pharmacies offering a comprehensive selection of medications. And in California, people with insurance on file at a pharmacy who pay for drugs on their own will have the cost go toward their deductible. But check with your insurer, because some allow it, Schondelmeyer says. One downside to paying out of pocket for your meds, whether at one of these websites or elsewhere, is that the cost typically won’t go toward your insurance deductible. Still, there are some drawbacks to using these online services, particularly if your medications are less common, you take them infrequently, they require refrigeration or other special handling, or you need them quickly.Īlso, while prices at these sellers are often low, some people with good insurance may get better deals, or even drugs at no cost, with their insurance. And Amazon and Costco benefit from their huge buying power. The company, as well as Amazon and Costco, also keeps drug prices low in part by charging membership fees. Zack Zeller, co-founder of ScriptCo, agrees, saying that eliminating insurance helps his company avoid the complicated rules and expenses of the insurance marketplace. That means companies can avoid additional dispensing charges and other fees they may incur from an insurer or a middleman like a pharmacy benefits manager, says Lisa Faast, PharmD, founder of DiversifyRx, a pharmacy consulting firm, and owner of multiple pharmacies in Texas and Louisiana. Six of the pharmacies say they keep prices low in part by not accepting insurance. In general, we found that prices at the pharmacies for the drugs we looked at were low, often less than the average $12 copay that people with employer-provided insurance pay for generic drugs, according to figures from Kaiser. If you’re one of the millions of Americans filling prescriptions with generic drugs-which account for at least 90 percent of all meds sold in pharmacies in the U.S.-and you’re looking for savings wherever you can find them, see what our spot check of eight online sellers revealed and what you need to know if you’re considering ordering from one of them. We shopped for a variety of common meds, scoured the FAQs, e-chatted with pharmacists, and pored over the fine print to identify the upsides and potential drawbacks to using these services. Meanwhile, we wanted to test-drive the online sites to sample their prices and see how they compared. But two provisions in President Joe Biden’s proposed Build Back Better plan go further, aiming to limit Medicare Part D annual out-of-pocket expenses to $2,000, and capping insulin prices at $35 on most insurance plans for almost everyone who needs it. Many focus on issues around very expensive brand-name drugs. ![]() So Laurent shopped around and found it on for $117 for a 90-day supply, saving her about $75 compared with using insurance.Ī dozen or so bills addressing the problem of high drug costs have been introduced in Congress over the past few years. But two years ago, she says her insurer moved the drug to a more costly tier. The 69-year-old retiree takes the generic version of Uloric to treat gout, which she says worked well for almost a decade. That’s what happened to Nevada resident Mary Laurent. He notes that hundreds of drugs aren’t covered well, or at all, by insurers in order to manage costs. “Or consumers are sometimes charged a percentage of a drug’s high price tag instead of a low copay.”īut the toughest problem a consumer can face is when “insurance doesn’t cover a drug at all,” Schondelmeyer says. The high cost is a problem even for people who have health insurance, which can “require a person to meet a drug deductible by spending $1,000, $2,000, or more before coverage and discounts begin,” says Stephen Schondelmeyer, PhD, a professor of pharmaceutical care and health systems at the University of Minnesota. ![]()
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