Check your pharmacy coverage and save big!

[lucille]

We switched health insurance at the first of the year. Our previous coverage had a clause that you would pay your minimum $10 copay even if the drug was under $10. It would make one of the $4 prescription drugs $10 if my insurance was applied. So I got in the habit of asking the pharmacy to specifically not run any of our $4 prescriptions against our insurance.

For some reason today the pharmacy ran my $4 prescription against our new health plan pharmacy coverage. It cost me $1 for 30 days of meds. The new plan (one of the blue cross plans) pays for 75% of the cost of your prescription, you pay 25%. Since they apply this with no minimums I got my $4 prescription for $1. Had the pharmacy not decided to try and run this I would have never known I could get an additional deal.

So if your on a percentage type pharmacy coverage you might be able to get even more of a deal.

[kickchk]

Our co-pay for prescriptions is $10, but even if I use my insurance at Wal-Mart, I'm only charged $4 (if its one of their $4 presciptions).

[happysmileylady]

Another pharmacy tip, if I can add to your thread, is to check around at different pharmacies for prices on your perscription. It never occured to me that like the price of a gallon of milk at different stores, different perscriptions can have different prices at different pharmacies. Over the last six months or so I was going through IF treatments and I couldn't find everything I needed all at one pharmacy. But several could order one or more and would list the prices for me. I finally found a pharmacy that not only had most of the stuff, but actually price matched a specialty discount pharmacy so it was much cheaper, but as I went through several places, I discovered price differences of hundreds of dollars. Now, for common perscriptions the differences aren't likely so big, but for uncommon or expensive ones, it might be worth it to shop around and see which pharmacies are the cheapest for what you need. Particularly if you have an insurance that pays a percentage rather than one that has a specific copay involved.

[lucille]

I found that Target will price match. Since the local grocery chain (Hyvee) has a slightly different $4 drug program than Target we were able to get a medication refilled for $4 that would normally have been about $30.
Prices matter if your paying out of pocket or pay on a percentage basis through your pharmacy coverage. If you are stuck on an expensive medication there are some brand name drugs that also have rebate cards you can sign up for to get a discount and most can also be used against your copay.