How to Find Hundreds in Prescription Drug Savings
62Going to the doctor's office can be an expensive affair. I recently made a mistake that could have cost me over $300 and would have ended up costing me thousands. What was my mistake? Let me start from the beginning.
For the last several weeks, my daughter had been sneezing a lot lately. Not unexpected at this time of year. We have given her Zyrtec for the last several years with good results. It got even better when it went over the counter about a year ago. So about three weeks ago my daughters allergies started to get worse. Sneezing all the time and she got a bunch of bumps on her legs. The Zyrtec wasn't working anymore. We tried two other over the counter allergy medicines with no luck. I ended up taking her to the doctor’s office to get her tested and see if the doctor could prescribe a more powerful allergy drug.
Luckily the doctor was able to pin point the allergy and prescribed a new drug for my daughter. She gave us two weeks worth of samples and we went on our merry way. The new drug worked great. My daughter stop sneezing in less than one day, and within three days the bumps on her legs were gone. After a week and a half I headed off to the drug store to fill the prescription. I told the pharmacist how well it worked for my daughter as he looked up my insurance info in his computer. After getting a puzzled look on his face, he ask "how well did it work for your daughter". I said very well, and then he dropped the big bomb on me. He said that the 30 day prescription would be $390. Let me say that again, $390! That works out to about $13 a day. I really love my daughter, but I cannot afford that. Her allergies do suck, but what is a parent to do. It’s not like she is going to die. I had to decline the prescription and went home empty handed.
I called the doctor’s office and asked to speak with the doctor. After a long time on hold, I asked the doctor if she knew how much the prescription she wrote cost. She said no, and asked how much. When I told her $390 she was left speechless. This is when I had my light bulb moment. I asked her if any of the generic drugs that Wal-Mart sells for $4 would work. She said she didn't know what drugs they offered at that price. I quickly got on the internet and looked it up. They have the drugs broken down by category on their website, so I started reading the drug names on the allergy list. After about four names the doctor said that that one should work. I asked her to call that prescription into the pharmacy and sure enough, the new generic prescription worked just as well as the expensive drug but only cost 1/100th of the price.
Where to Find Prescription Drug Savings
So next time you are going to the doctors, print out the list of generic drugs first. After some research I found out that there are lots of pharmacies that offer discounted prices on generic drugs. I made this list of pharmacies that offer low cost generic drugs to help save you some time. Just click on each link and print it out.
Be sure to print each of these lists out as each store has different drugs. I don’t know how often they change so I would check the lists every once in a while. Seriously, save yourself some money and print these lists out. Put them in your car so you have them when you go to the doctors!
