Toni:
I am a weekly follower of your Toni Says® Medicare column and would like to let your readers in on a wonderful experience I had regarding saving serious dollars on an expensive generic prescription.
I recently received a generic prescription for my Parkinson’s disease. When I went to my Plan D preferred Walgreens pharmacy and was informed that specific generic was not in my Part D plans formulary and would cost $460 per month. I then went to Kroger and was told the retail price was $199 per month.
When I discussed my experience to a friend, she told me about a web site “GoodRX.com”. What a blessing this was! GoodRX.com gave me a printout of drug stores which sell the drug at a discounted price by entering my zip code with no strings attached I went to Wal-Mart with the GoodRX coupon in hand. Wal-Mart’s cost for one-month drug supply was only $43.00.
How can the price of a generic drug range in price from $43to $460? Something is wrong with our American prescription drug system.
Tell your readers not to give up if they get an outrageous price for a drug. There are several web sites like GoodRX which provide a similar service. Just do your homework!
Julia from Arizona
Julia:
Guess What?? I tried GoodRX this week and want to tell the Toni Says® readers that GoodRX.com really does work! I had a generic antibiotic and allergy medication prescribed last week and when I went to pick them up, they were over $120 for generics. I was shocked and remembered Julia’s email about GoodRX.com.
I looked online at GoodRX to check the cost at HEB and the savings was over $68. The antibiotic was $30 and allergy med was $28. Had I gone to Wal-Mart instead of HEB the savings would have been $84, but my prescription had already been called to HEB. It was too late to change.
Next time I get a prescription, I will go to the GoodRX.com site and do research on which pharmacy has the lowest price.
For a nice Christmas present, visit www.goodrx.com/medicare and search their Medicare section to help make the cost of expensive and common prescriptions affordable. This way one might avoid or delay the famous “Donut Hole”.
The GoodRX Medicare site will search Part D drug prices at pharmacies in your zip code that may be less than your Part D co-pay — especially if a drug isn’t covered by your Part D plan.
On the GoodRX website, it states, “that over 140,000 doctors nationwide recommend GoodRX to their patients and more than $1billion dollars has been saved nationwide on prescription drug costs.”
GoodRX is 100% free and no personal information is required.
2019 Medicare Part D costs are below:
- Initial Deductible: $415
- Initial Coverage Limit: $3,820 in 2019 where the 2019 “Donut Hole” begins.
- Out of Pocket Costs: You will spend 25% of the brand name drug, the Drug company will spend 70% and the chosen Part D plan will spend 5% until the total spend of your prescriptions is $5,100.
- Catastrophic Coverage: Once the $5,100 has been spent, you will enter Catastrophic Coverage phase where your “covered” generic prescription drugs co pays are $3.40 or 5% of the “covered” generic prescriptions above $68 cost or for “covered” brand name prescriptions the co pays are $8.50 or 5% of the “covered” brand name prescription drugs above $170 cost.
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