Cheapest Pharmacy Online Are Not The Best Deal Overall

When you don’t have health insurance and are suddenly faced with a need to purchase expensive prescription drugs what do you do? Sabrina Burton (name disguised) recently lost her job at a large company in the telecom corridor of Dallas, TX. With her job went her health insurance and she was faced with a sudden need to find a way to pay for critical medications taken by her adolescent son. Like most people, Sabrina began her search for cheap drug prices by calling her regular pharmacy (Walgreens) where she found out that 30 tablets of her son’s Risperidone 4mg was over $300 but if she signed up for the special club pricing she could get it for under $150. This was still a lot more expensive than her normal copay of $25 so she called a CVS where the pricing was a little over $200. Going online she went to drugstore.com and told herself that she would be willing to wait the 7 to 10 days for the medication to be filled and mailed back to her if she found it for under $80. Unfortunately, the price was around $200 there too. Finally, she searched on google and found a website called NorthwestPharmacy.com, a site that bills itself as “America’s Canadian Pharmacy” with a pharmacy supposedly located at Unit #101 20560 56th Ave, Langley, BC, Canada V3A 3Y8. Here the pricing is about $40. Hoping fervently that this is a legitimate pharmacy that will dispense the right medication and keep her son healthy she goes ahead and places an order. Little did Sabrina know that just 2 miles from her at the local Albertson’s Sav-on Pharmacy, with a U.S. licensed pharmacist that she could have spoken to and received advice from, someone just purchased the exact same medication on that day for all of $30!

Sabrina’s experience is not uncommon. Most people do not have the time or the tools to properly compare drug prices in their neighborhoods. Once Sabrina got four quotes all at $150 or more, how could she have thought anyone nearby could possibly have it for much less? A technology startup now has a platform that will allow people like this to quickly and efficiently do a detailed price comparison of prescription drugs at local pharmacies in seconds. Customers are not restricted to searching just the highly visible large pharmacies nearby but also the pharmacy inside the grocery store, the independent pharmacist with the small store and basically every local pharmacy in their neighborhood that has a fully qualified U.S. licensed pharmacist on duty. The startup, ZipcodeMeds (www.zipcodemeds.com) uses its technology platform to connect customers with local pharmacies in their neighborhoods that display their best prices on select medications. Even if a request is made for a drug that is not pre-listed on ZipcodeMeds by local pharmacies, the system automatically routes the customer’s request to multiple local pharmacies who will in turn bid for the customer’s business by offering their best prices. Overall, customers will find that the local pharmacy can in many cases provide a fantastic deal at a price they can afford and without having to worry about safety, counterfeit medication or qualifications of an unseen “pharmacist” in a distant location or country.

Research indicates that 30% of all prescription medication drugs that are sold through online pharmacies are counterfeit. Many sell counterfeit drugs that do not contain the stated active ingredients or only contain small or variable quantities of the active ingredients. Such drugs are harmful to the patient’s health, and are likely to make the conditions of the patient to deteriorate. Using ZipcodeMeds enables the customer take advantage of the oft stated benefit of online pharmacies – lower drug prices – while also ensuring patient safety and high quality of care.

Eric Basmajian is the author of this article on Compare Drug Prices. Find more information on Find Local Pharmacies here.