I went to Wegman's looking for some Heartguard for my Weimaraner, but left disappointed.

On a more related note, I bet they jack up the price for Imodium in turn. Anyone who's spent much time on antibiotics knows what I mean.

This is nice (although generic antibiotics are really inexpensive to begin with), but I must say I'm slightly concerned that this will increase the amount of antibiotic scrips, resulting in a general reduction in efficacy of the antibiotics across the population.

In other words, the more antibiotics are used to treat a disease or condition, the less effective those antibiotics will be at treating that disease in the future.

What we really need is a concerted effort to reduce the cost of other prescriptions that are still on-patent.

@Ash78: Lots of antibiotics gives you the runs? I'm asking seriously, here.

@crashedpc: Yep, think of them as the opposite of the "probiotics" that yogurts tout. Antibiotics kill most of the bacteria in your body, both good and bad...and many of the good ones are in your gut, aiding digestion.

@Ash78:
Heartguard is a prescription med for dogs, you can only get it at the vet.

Rampant epidemic theories in 3,2...

@gertymac: Or (carefully) on ebay if you don't want to not get totally ripped off.

@Ash78: Oooh... I totally didn't draw the connection between the two. *cracks open Vive* Yay for probiotic cereal!

@ekthesy: Maybe I'm just more paranoid, but I'd prefer they didn't do this at all, due to your concerns. Antibiotics are over-used enough as it is, making them free will just exacerbate that problem, and I'm not really a big fan of antibiotic resistant/immune strains of anything.

@unobservant: Too late. :)

While the previously stated concerns are certainly valid (heightened prescriptions for free meds = less effective antibiotics), at least some big companies are showing some heart. Wegmans is pretty well-known for its level of awesome, but I'm glad to see Stop & Shop joining in (since that's where my food budget goes now...having moved to CT).

We named our hamster after Wegmans. We call him "D.Wegs" (after its founder, Danny Wegmans). Why, you ask? Because I miss a sweet grocery store. How crazy is that?

@Ash78: Agreed. I eat 8 oz of regular lowfat vanilla yogurt a day, bought in 2lb tubs(great for storage for the elderly relatives). When taking antibiotics, I increase that to 2 servings a day. I also always insist on the full 28 horse pill regimen, instead of that stupid 5 pill thing. I still sometimes get the runs when taking them, but the yogurt helps even out my gut.

I don't think there will be a huge increase in prescriptions written due to these chains handing out free antibiotics. Most doctors do not give prescriptions for antibiotics unless you really need them. If you just have a virus and not a bacterial infection, a doctor should not give antibiotics.

Kudos to the stores that are doing this. Every little bit helps. I'm sure some people will move thier other prescriptions to these pharmacieswhich will result in higher revenue.

We've been getting free antibiotics from Meijers in Michigan for years now.

@crashedpc:

Yah, when I got bit by my sister's cat I got a nasty infection and was put on some strong antibiotics.

The GI problems with antibiotics is one reason I always have a hard time finishing them. I always do, though, despite the troubles, just because I don't want to be infected by a superbug.

@ekthesy: I doubt that doctors are going to prescribe more antibiotics just because three chains are making them free.

@ekthesy: This does not increase the amount of antibiotics prescribed. This simply offers a cheap way for consumers to get already prescribed antibiotics. The only way that there can be an increase in antibiotics is when the physicians prescribe it more. There is no way that a grocery chain offering free antibiotics can stimulate local physicians to prescribe more.

However, your statement that over prescribing of antibiotics being a concern is very real. Over prescribing antibiotics causes drug resistance.

-Phex
-3rd Year PharmD/MBA Candidate

@gertymac: Just a bad William Wegman joke. Here's a GIS (SFW), you've probably seen his photos: [images.google.com]

@crashedpc: Eating yogurt (any yogurt, doesn't have to be the special stuff) usually helps prevent antibiotic diarrhea ... but I mostly take antibiotics for sinus infections, and dairy thickens the hell out of your mucus, so you gotta decide if you want your gut to hate you for a week or if you want it to take that much longer for your sinuses to clear out!

It depends on the antibiotic and on your reaction to them but, yeah, while antibiotics are targeted to be better at killing specific bacteria, the fact is they're killing ALL your bacteria, and you need that friendly bacteria colony in your gut to help you digest your food and manufacture vitamin K, and those guys are all getting killed off too.

(F'ex, amoxicillan I barely notice. Erthromycin screwed me up so bad the doctor and I agreed I'd be better off sick because the cure was hella worse than the disease!)

@pbj_sushi: I would kill for a Wegmans in CT. They've moved all the way down to Virginia now, but totally skipped anywhere East of New York.

For what it's worth, Publix (popular chain the the southeast, mainly Florida) is also advertising free antibiotics, although I haven't had to avail myself of the offer so I don't know the details.

@BlondeGrlz is having a BlondeBoyz!: Not so, rumor is they're headed to Boston next, or at least thinking about it. Not quite CT, but closer, right? Of course they tend to target the more affluent areas in their newer expansions.

This is not the first time a grocery store chain has offered free antibiotics. The company states as above...

"If this is the way that we can help most people, why not?"

What this really translates as..

"If this is the way that we can increase prescription volume and get customers inside the store to wait on the prescriptions and do some shopping while they wait, then we should do it. At the same time, we can claim we are doing a service for the community."

Basically, that is all this is. Publix grocery chain offered free antibiotics in my area for over the last year so this is not the first time it has been done.

I am not saying this is not a service for the community as it can certainly be helpful to people on the lower part of the economic tree as well as the middle class. I've heard of cases where a person saves 80 dollars total for getting antibiotics for their 3 kids (this specific case was a pharmacist going to another pharmacy to take advantage of the free drugs).

Generic antibiotics are generally quite cheap. Amoxicillin, Penicillin, and Ciprofloxacin are all very very cheap. If they can get someone in the store waiting on their free antibiotics to buy just a 2 liter of coke then it pays for the pills. Sometimes even a pack of gum will do the trick. If I remember correctly, my pharmacy gets a 100 count bottle of generic Cipro for about 5 dollars, Amoxicillin capsules in bottles of 500 for about 20 bucks, and Penicillin V in bottles of 500 for about 15 bucks (all from Cardinal Health). So the tablets/capsules only cost pennies while the bottle and label probably cost a little more.

This is also a way to create customer loyalty and bring the customer back with their other prescriptions which the grocer can turn a profit from as well.

This seems to be the new fad for antibiotics in grocery store pharmacies. Not all chains are doing this, however, it looks to be that primarily grocery chains are the #1 user of this tactic.

-Phex
-3rd Year PharmD/MBA Candidate

Oh Meijers, how I miss you. Your 24-hour availability of almost anything I could need or want made living in the midwest a little less crappy.

It's really just a publicity stunt. Those antibiotics are insanely cheap anyway.

@Ash78: Check UPCO.

[www.upco.com]

When I had dogs, their prices for EVERYTHING (including Heartguard) were fantastic. My dogs' meds were half the price I'd pay at the vet's.

It used to really burn the vet when I'd ask for a prescription instead of buying the meds directly from him. Too bad.

Yeah, this is great, unless you're allergic to penicillin or amoxcillin based antibiotics :-P

@Skybolt: @Phexerian:

It may not in itself lead to more prescriptions for antibiotics, but patients knowing they can get them for free will likely lead to an increase in requests for antibiotic scrips, i.e. "Can you just write me a prescription for antibiotics?" As a PharmD candidate, you would know that many doctors will just write the scrip to get the pt out the door.

And as more and more PAs and NPs are writing scrips, you'll see that phenomenon increase.

@valsharess1: Boo. Serves me right for watching my stories whilst having the comment window open.

My head is spinning - commenters on this site are upset and complaining when the price is REDUCED??? I understood on some level the outrage (though was confused by the shock) that prices of things sometimes go up, but now complaints when potentially life-saving medications are being given away for FREE???

COME ON PEOPLE!

@ekthesy: I can only hope that, rather than people taking antibiotics unnecessarily, this will result in more people finishing their treatment since there is less cost associated with it. This would help reduce the number of antibiotic resistance bacteria.
Also, I think the beef / meat industry is more responsible for creating antibiotic resistant bacteria than just about anyone else...

This tells me the Wal-Mart Rx program is really sucking a lot of business from these other chains. Every time we get a new Rx, we check it against the current Wal-Mart $4 list then decide where to fill it. We're not gung-ho Wal-Mart, but they ARE saving us some serious money vs our regular pharmacy.

@bunnymare: I actually held a similar complaint/theory in college, while watching prescription pill and Ecstasy prices go down, that it was the reason behind the massive increase in usage. Not the same thing, obviously, but people are a little more cavalier when low cost (or no cost) is in involved.

Magazines and newspapers could do just fine on ad revenues, but they have to charge a small subscription fee to keep EVERYONE from signing up (and bankrupting them!).

COME ON PEOPLE!

Ewwww, gross!

@nataku83:

Well, when you're prescribed a course of antibiotics, you pay for the whole thing. People should finish the treatment regardless of whether they paid nothing or paid the full price for it.

And I fully++ agree with you about the meat industry, but I admit I'm not educated enough to know if the widespread use of antibiotics in animals raised for meat is responsible for resistant strains of bacteria in animals, in humans, or in both.

@Ash78:

Bad logic - PRESCRIPTION antibiotics have an inherent gatekeeper, in that these stores are NOT giving them away without a prescription written by a licensed physician.

Furthermore, I don't think it's valid to compare antibiotics and painkillers. Unless you know a lot of people who get all hopped up on penicillin or amoxicillin. Ha.

@ekthesy: when you're prescribed a course of antibiotics, you pay for the whole thing.

Most of the time. But some insurance companies will only pay for what they consider 1 month's worth at a time. I would have appreciated having this availible a few years ago, when I needed 3-month's worth of doxycycline before a trip to a malarial zone. A fairly rare experience, but I'm sure there are other people who need more than what their insurance company has determined is their quota for the month. Making them free means it's more likely they'll take the full course.

It also makes it more likely they'll be willing to try a different antibiotic if their dr determines that what they have isn't responding for a first-line course of treatment, since there won't be a financial penalty for diagnostic guesswork.

@ekthesy: Also in agreement about the meat industry. I found these 2 articles interesting -

"Antibiotic resistance in food-related bacteria"
[www.sciencedirect.com]

and
"Antibiotic resistance genes and identification of staphylococci collected from the production chain of swine meat commodities"
[www.sciencedirect.com]

@BlondeGrlz is having a BlondeBoyz!: Not only that, but Wegmans skipped the actual parts of civilization in New York. Having no stores of that caliber in the NYC metro area is a crime.

@bunnymare: This is very true. Good point. I don't think people are seeing a traditional $30 co-pay and thinking "I guess I'll go without" (and if they do, that's specifically the type of person the freebies are supposed to help). In my mind, though, I was thinking about all the overbearing moms who "demand" antibiotics from their pediatricians for every ailment.

And I went to plenty of antibiotic parties in college! :D

@Ash78: Haha. Nice. I fail at humor. :)

@Eyebrows McGee: Awesome info. Thanks! *trundles off to buy yogurt*

@Phexerian: All good points. Since you mentioned Ciprofloxacin, I wanted to remind everyone: if you're taking Cipro or any fluoroquinolone, take it easy, at least on your joints. For some reason these antibiotics can cause tendon problems (rarely), including "spontaneous" Achilles tendon rupture. *shudder*

(Quoting the above-linked 2003 article: "We describe a case of spontaneous rupture of the Achilles' tendon associated with ciprofloxacin." "Fluoroquinolone use and repeated tendon ruptures in our patient, who did not have any risk factors, both suggested a clear causal relationship and emphasized the roles of individual factors. Because these antimicrobials are in common use, physicians should consider this side effect even in the absence of the risk factors.")

@BlondeGrlz is having a BlondeBoyz!: Moving away from a Wegmans 15 minutes from home was the only sad thing I felt about moving out of PA. I don't understand why they won't come in--they would make a killing, and the closest comparable chain--Stew Leonards--really bears no comparison whatsoever.

Alas, now if only I could afford to go see the doctor to get the needed meds prescribed. :/ health care system = broken. It should not cost a couple hundred bucks to spend 10 minutes with a doctor so they can write you a 'script. I suffered with an eye infection for about 6 weeks because I couldn't afford to go to a doctor to see if it was bacterial or viral or what and get a prescription. Not fun. The cost of meds themselves are only half the problem, it's the outrageous medical billing that needs to start playing charity.

@bellethellama: They'd make a killing in any part of the NYC metro that isn't NYC itself (specifically Westchester, Rockland, LI and SW Connecticut). If people freak out for a place like Fairway...

@Yurei: Yes, doctors SHOULD work for free. I mean, you volunteer your time, don't you - refusing to accept anything so crass as a salary? I'm sure from your tone that YOU spent 10 expensive years in school to attain a license to practice a trade that you'd prefer not to be paid for. Obviously.

I think the attitude you show is uninformed, unrealistic and immature. Just writing a prescription (not to mention serious medical diagnosis or treatment) requires medical expertise and can incur serious liability (and rightly so).

And in fact, there are free clinics anywhere I've ever lived.

Read a little closer. It's not totally free at Wegmans. It turns out, it is against NYS law to dispense pharmaceuticals for free. So, what Wegmans is doing is billing the insurer for their share and eating the co-pay.

But, I've heard of more than one person being turned down because they are *uninsured*. No one to pay for any part of it.

@bunnymare: I'm not asking them to work for free, i'm asking them to work for a real freaking listic wage. I'd love to bill people $300 for half an hour of my time working at a store. Oh wait, that's right, that's what the OBGYN charges for a papsmere, nevermind the $60 a pop lab tests on top of that.

I'm all for them getting paid. I'm totally however not for them charging exorbitant amounts for basically doing nothing. I go in after waiting forever because they're always running late (not always their fault, but sometimes is, especially when it's the first appointment of the day) spend 10-15 minutes with the doctor if i'm lucky, being rushed all the meanwhile without being able to get answers to the questions I try and interject, all so they can write a script for a new inhalor or whatever. It's absurd. either charge reasonable rates or make it so insurance is actually affordable to people who can't get it through work. I understand all the reasons why the costs are so high but seriously, they need to fix it. All of it.

Free clinics Psht, I wish. Not around here.

United Supermarkets here in Texas is not only doing free antibiotics but also free prenatal vitamins. The free vitamins is something I'd like to see more of.

@usa_gatekeeper: Wal-mart has changed the way retail pharmacies to business with consumers. Many other companies are now offering drug plans from their pharmacy that are comparable. Some offer 90 day supplies that equal out to 4 dollars a month.

The other part that may change in the future, is when insurance companies finally catch on to this, use this as an excuse to ask, "If Wal-mart can do this and make money why can't all the other pharmacies?" and thus may try to cut reimbursement costs to pharmacies. In turn doing this they will probably not lower insurance premiums either as they never do.

Now, if someone comes in and has no insurance, and costs them 50-60 bucks for a generic, we usually send them to Wal-mart.

-Phex
-3rd Year PharmD/MBA Candidate