Comparison Shopping

While we are a pretty healthy family, all 3 of us do take prescription medication (DS has migraines, DD has asthma). At one point I was spending nearly $150 a month just on prescriptions, which is a pretty good chunk of our budget. Thankfully our doctors have worked with us to change over to less expensive drugs, and recently the most expensive one has gone generic. I now spend around around $45 a month - that's a big difference!

But I was reminded last week that it never hurts to shop around. My usual pharmacy has been sold and is undergoing some changes, and I'm not sure I want to keep our routine medications there. So I took 10 minutes and called the pharmacies in town to check prices. For example, in our case, I found DS' most expensive migraine prescription ranged from (cost to me) $13 to $44 - for the same generic prescription! I pay 20% of the shelf price, so if you don't have prescription drug coverage or are on Medicare and in the doughnut hole, the difference would be even more pronounced - $65 to $227! And that's just within our medium-sized town.

Ultimately I will probably stay with our original pharmacy. To get the best deals, I would need to have all 4 prescriptions at 3 different pharmacies, and I'm not sure I'm THAT organized!

Insurance, cable, phone, prescriptions....these are all things that should be comparison shopped routinely a couple times a year. Anything else to add to the list?

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