While Lansaw is typical of the people who save the most with online pharmacies like Drugstore.com, even those with a prescription plan can save money by avoiding their corner store. Major insurers have discount agreements with online or mail-order pharmacies to send you three months’ worth of medication for the equivalent of two monthly co-pays. (Ask your insurer whom it contracts with.)
But for the more than 70 million Americans who don’t have prescription benefits, searching for better deals online can lead to big savings each month. Start by checking out sites such as pharmacychecker.com and RXDiscountGuides.com to compare the prices for your drugs from different reputable vendors. (If you don’t want to pay the membership fees, visit online giants like Drugstore.com and Costco.com, which often have the best deals in the United States anyway.) Once you’ve found a good price, click through to a vendor, fill out a form, fax in your prescription (or have your doctor call it in), type in your credit-card number, and the pills will arrive at your doorstep a couple of days later. (You can also often order over the phone.) Cybervendors will often call your current pharmacy and transfer your prescriptions free of charge. And if the past few years are any indication, it’s catching on. Americans will spend some $5.1 billion on prescription drugs purchased through online mail-order pharmacies this year–up from $3.2 billion last year, according to a study by Jupiter Research.
U.S.-based online pharmacies are almost always more expensive than their foreign counterparts–except for generics and lifestyle drugs such as Viagra. Last July, Congress passed a bill allowing Americans to buy FDA-approved drugs from Canada. The bill hasn’t taken effect, but Customs officials seem to be turning a blind eye. And because the savings can be substantial, plenty of people are willing to take the risk. Haines Gaffner, 70, found he could save some $90 a month by ordering arthritis medicines like Bextra and Fosamax from Pharmacyincanada.com. “Why should I throw money down the drain by staying with my local place?” he asked.
But now that there are hundreds of sites hawking drugs online and through e-mail, be careful whom you trust. Many sites sell prescription drugs after a virtual “doctor’s consultation,” which often means little more than filling out an online medical-history form. Buyers risk misdiagnosis, a loss of privacy or even bogus pills. For people like Lansaw, who sometimes stretched her budget by taking her pills less often than prescribed, the careful shopping paid off. Since she can afford all her prescriptions–plus her meals–she has never felt better, she says. And that’s priceless.
