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This email hit home. As most of you know I have some serious health problems and thus I am on some very expensive medications. Over the winter last year it got so bad that I didn’t know if I should give up eatting, my meds, or the oil heat, all three very important but when you live on a fixed income it doesn’t strech far enough.
Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought
>everyone I knew should know about this. Please read the following
>and pass it on.
>
>On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for
>channel
>7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by
>pharmacies.
>He found in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs
>were
>marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Yes, that’s not a typo
>…… three thousand percent!
>
>So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs,
>and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies
>with
>the pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a
>prescription
>drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills.
>The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic
>equivalent,
>they would only cost $80, making you think you a! re “saving” $20.
>What
>the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills
>may have only cost him $10!
>
>At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson
>whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this
>practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over
>their
>cost for the generic drugs.
>
>I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get
>it’s online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent
>with the
>online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from
>my own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which helps
>prevent nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent,
>which
>cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and
>I could have bought100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills,
>I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.
>
>I would like to mention, that although Costco is a “membership”
>type
>store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there,
>as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the
>door
>that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.
>
Thanks for that information. I’ll check into it. I have some expensive drugs to by myself. We had insurance, but it can be pretty deptive. They’ll charge me half price, but their full price is outrageous.
Brenda,
Just a note to say thank you for the information on medications. One medicine I take on a daily basis finally came out with a generic form. However, in my case I wasn’t able to tolerate the generic brand. I found out through research that generic medications don’t have to be exactly like the original, my doctor didn’t even know that. If I didn’t have insurance this one medicine would cost $900 a month. I think the goverment needs to step in and control the prices of prescription drugs, but I doubt if that will ever occur. Take care and God Bless you.
Sincerely,
Cohees lady
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