Wild Pharmacy Prices: Buyer Beware!

Wild pharmacy prices: Buyer beware of what you pay for your medications. A few hours ago, I bought some eye-drops at my local CVS pharmacy. The price for the drops, which contain two active ingredients, was $48.23 when using my Medicare Part D insurance (I won’t mention the insurer, because I’m generally pleased with the program). Out of curiosity, I checked that price against what GoodRx would provide a free coupon for the same drops today. Well, had I used that free “non-insurance” coupon, I would have saved a few bucks, paying only $37.56 for the drops. (More information about GoodRx Holdings can be found here.)

What? I paid more by using my insurance than I would have paid by simply using a free coupon?  Yep. I’ve produced the evidence. Not only that, but last month I paid over $140 for a month’s supply of another medication that I had bought last year for just over $40 (when using my last year’s Part D insurance with another provider). I just checked the GoodRx site now and saw the price at CVS with a free GoodRx coupon would have bought the same product for under $40. Wow! That would have been over $100 cheaper. Go figure!

Please understand that I have no financial interest in GoodRx, nor do I have any reason for mentioning this other than to report what seems to be a rather uneven system of pharmaceutical prices. And it is another example of the exorbitant cost of medical care (see here for an earlier post on this subject). There is, of course, more to the drug story. Read on.

According to an article I just read online, and I assume will appear in tomorrow’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, the so-called saving of drugs by 90 day mail delivery actually is more expensive. Below are some quotes from that article headlined: Mail-Order Drugs Were Supposed to Keep Costs Down. It’s Doing the Opposite.

“Drugs delivered by mail are costing multiples more than those picked up at a store counter.  Markups were as much as 35 times higher than what other pharmacies charged, according to a recent analysis of millions of prescriptions in Washington state.

“At the urging of firms that manage their drug benefits, employers have turned to mail-order pharmacies to save money on prescriptions. The pharmacies promised to sell medicines to employees at lower prices than their bricks-and-mortar rivals by buying larger quantities from drug makers and providing 90-day supplies.

“Instead, the opposite is happening. Drugs ordered through the mail-order pharmacies are costing more, raising employers’ spending. . .

“That is partly because of price markups on prescriptions filled by mail-order pharmacies—especially those owned by the pharmacy-benefit managers, or PBMs, themselves—according to employers and consultants who have reviewed businesses’ drug spending.

“One employee’s three-month supply of a prescription for a generic antidepressant, fluoxetine, cost Unity Care about $100, more than twice the average price that retail pharmacies paid for the drug. The same fluoxetine prescription could be purchased from the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug pharmacy for about $12.”

Quite a saving, wouldn’t you say? Twelve bucks versus about a hundred? Wild pharmacy prices: buyer beware. Below is more from the article, presenting data revealing that mail order pharmacies, which do not have the expenses of brick and mortar stores, are charging exorbitant prices.

“Generic prescriptions dispensed by mail pharmacies were marked up on average more than three times higher than prescriptions filled by bricks-and-mortar pharmacies, according to a recent analysis by 3 Axis Advisors, a healthcare research firm.

“Branded drugs filled by mail were marked up on average three to six times higher than the cost of medicines dispensed by chain and grocery-store pharmacies, and roughly 35 times higher than those filled by independent pharmacies, according to the analysis, which looked at 2.4 million claims by self-insured employers in Washington state from 2020 to 2023.”

Wild pharmacy prices: buyer beware!

 

ADDENDUM: After I published this post, my daughter-in-law, a hospital pharmacist, sent me two other sources for low-priced medications that are worthy of checking.  You can learn more about them by clicking Here, and Here: