Do you get your prescription medication at Wal-Mart? No? FOR GOD’S SAKE WHY NOT?
I started a new medication a month ago and purchased it at Walgreens as per usual. (They have a drive-thru after all.) $29.99 didn’t seem all that expensive in light of the horror stories I’ve heard lately about $700 prescriptions for a 30-day supply. But we switched to a high deductible health plan at work this year so the first $2,500 comes straight out of my pocket. I thought it prudent to shop around. After all, $29.99 x 12 months = $360 a year.
I decided to check out Wal-Mart's advertized $4 prescriptions, thinking my medication would of course not be on the list, but it was. Check out the Wal-Mart Retail Prescription Program Drug List to see if your medications are too.
Not only do I save $25.99 a month – that’s $312 a year people! – but I can get a 90-day prescription for $10, saving another $2 per refill AND two trips to Wal-Mart. (Seriously, if I have to actually get out of my car and walk inside, the fewer trips the better. Wal-Mart is a zoo. Everyone knows that.) So with the additional $2 savings by filling my prescription every 90 days instead of every month, I save a total of $320 a year. THREE HUNDRED and twenty dollars!
Imagine what I could buy with that money…or put it in savings like a good girl, which is perhaps wiser but certainly not as much fun.
I don’t get it though. How is it possible Wal-Mart can charge $40 a year while Walgreens charges $360 a year for the same medication? Is their volume really that much greater? Never mind, I don’t care. DON’T CARE, I TELL YOU. I’ll take my $320 and say thank you very much.
I even transferred the prescription online so I didn’t have to run around town picking up paperwork and dropping it off at the new pharmacy. There were a few glitches, however. The first had to do with Wal-Mart's email notification system. I immediately received this email:
| Thank you for your Wal-Mart Pharmacy order, which you will find summarized below. You will receive an email update within four hours. |
It was Sunday. Four hours later, I received an email with this in the Subject:
| Your Wal-Mart Pharmacy Order is Ready for Pickup |
I was quite impressed. Filled already on Sunday? Well done! My enthusiasm was premature, however. When I showed up on Monday to pick it up – walked inside, discovered the pharmacy closes 12:30-1:30, waited in line for 10 minutes behind 6 other people – I was told they had to contact my doctor to approve the transfer so my prescription had not yet been filled. When I went back and read the body of the email, the status read “processing.” Lesson learned: don’t just read the Subject because it may LIE. Read the entire email.
Bother.
It wasn’t a complete waste of time, however. The pharmacy tech told me about the 90-days for $10 thing so I was able to have my doctor call it in before they filled the original 30-day prescription.
The second glitch had to do with the doctor’s office and the girl on the phone who got me all confused and annoyed with bad information, then called back to say never mind. Though the doctor was able to call the initial prescription in to Walgreens a month ago, because I was transferring it to a new pharmacy, the doctor would have to fill out some form in triplicate and I would have to physically pick it up and deliver it to Wal-Mart, thereby nullifying the whole do-it-online-and-not-have-to-run-around-town convenience.
No, they can’t fax it.
Yes, it has to be done this way due to the type of drug.
She finally called back – 3 hours later – to say my dosage was small enough they didn’t need to fill out the form so the doctor had already called it in.
Since I have been on this medication a little over 3 weeks now, the snafu didn’t bother me as much as as I thought it would. A month ago I would have been pissed for the entire 3 hours. Instead, I was mildly annoyed my ingenious plan was foiled by bureaucratic ridiculousness but it only lasted about 5 minutes. Then I got back to work and forgot all about it.
When she finally called to tell me it was all for naught, I thought to myself, “They really need to give their people better training.” A month ago, I would have thought she was an idiot and seriously considered changing doctors because mine is obviously incompetent if that is the caliber of people she hires.
The miracle of modern medicine. Got Prozac?
