You can cut your prescription cost by 3/4 by signing up for Free Drug Card.
Simply type your first and last name into the online form, and it creates a printable card usable at many major chains and independent pharmacies. There’s a field for email address but you can type NONE if you don’t want email updates.
Go here to see which drugs, and how much, you can save on.
At the bottom of the printable page are computer codes and instructions for using the card with various pharmacies.
We thought this was too good to be true but we checked around and it seems legit, despite how janky the page looks. The card is sponsored by the non-profit United Networks of America and has been covered in USAToday, Self, and other reputable publications. Can’t see a catch yet, but let us know if you see one. — BEN POPKEN
Free Drug Card [Official Site] (Thanks to Jason!)
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Do they list their prices anywhere?
Does who? The card is free.
Sorry, what I meant was: Is there a simple way to find out which drugs this card covers, and how much of a discount you’d get for different drugs? (According to the website, it’s “up to 75 percent” off, which could be anything.)
The point would be to compare the price you’d pay using this card at a chain pharmacy to, say, filling the prescription at a discounter like Costco.
TedSez-
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They have a link on the right side of the page with pricing…
http://www.healthtrans.com/unaDrugPricing/index.jsp
–I knew what you meant!
Sorry if this double posts – netscape crashed on me after I clicked submit. (?)
Here’s a link, Ted:
http://www.healthtrans.com/unaDrugPricing/index.jsp
The link is on the right hand side of the free drug card page
Thanks, guys — that’s exactly what I was looking for, and I missed it completely. (Guess I can’t read cursive anymore.)
Wow, I’m looking for a catch, too, because this would sure beat the $30/month I spend on asthma meds.
Anyone know if this “stacks” with a Prescription Health Insurance plan? I usually only have to pay $10-$30 for meds thanks to my insurance, can I get an additional “up to 75%” off of that? (eg, Get away for only $2.50?)
According to Pharmacy Times:
Link: http://www.pharmacytimes.com/Article.cfm?Menu=1&ID=4031
So in other words I can use it instead of (e.g. as a supplement to) my health insurance’s plan?
Groovy.
This made my day.
dwarf-
I don’t think so! I believe non-formulary drugs are medications your insurance company doesn’t cover and that you have to pay for outright. In that case, the discount wouldn’t be applied to the cost of the drug minus what your insurance company pays, just the cost of the drug (since the insurance company DOESN’T pay).
I’m not a pharmacist, though, so who knows!
Its funny how some these “discount” prices are more than the regular retail prices at the same pharmacy when I do a comparison.
I thought “non-formulary” meant that the pharmacist didn’t need to hand-mix anything…
I don’t believe it will work on top of the other; I was figuring I’d need to choose one price or the other, much as if I went from one insurance plan to another.
This is worth a shot…
It sounds pretty good but then if you have a pretty decent prescription plan via your Health Insurance your co-pay is usually much less than 25% of the cost of the medicine so there wouldn’t be that many circumstances where it would help. For people without a plan it could be a lifesaver.
I love that there’s a publication called “Pharmacy Times.” I suppose you’d raise some red flags if you subscribed to the publication but you weren’t a pharmacist.
The Sam’s club in Columbia SC offers a lot of generics at $4 for a 30 day supply. Don’t need anything but your membership for that. Anything else, it might be good to use this deal.
Wal-Mart and Target both offer the super cheap generics in a number of states.
For example, I take Propecia to keep the hair on top of my head. My normal insurance doesn’t cover this. So I normally pay about $50 for a month’s supply. According to the pricing in that link from above, they’re saying with this card, I will pay about $7 or $8… Can this be right? That’s just frickin crazy!
Covert… I think that’s the price of a single pill. Type “30″ or “90″ in the Quantity window and you’ll get the real results. A month’s worth of Propecia would be about $65. In other words, most name-brand drugs cost no less than you’d pay without the card at a discount pharmacy.