On Monday night (July 22, 2002), Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Yes, that's not a typo..... three thousand percent!
Mr. Wilson did a thorough research, and checked out all the major drugstore chains, discount chains, independent pharmacies, and even checked on some Canadian pharmacies.
So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a
prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100.00 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic
equivalent, they would only cost $80.00, making you think you are "saving" $20.00 What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10.00!
At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over
their cost for the generic drugs. They gave the link to Costco, which I will include here, so that you can go and check prices for yourself.
www.costco.com http://www.costco.com/ Costco Online pharmacy Costco Online
I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get it's online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one
example from my own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the
price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.
I would like to mention, that although Costco is a "membership" type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there, as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.
I am asking each of you to please help me by copying this letter, and pasting it into your own email, and send it to everyone you know
with an email address. And if anyone has other ideas of how to address this problem, please contact me at
[email protected] http://us.f204.mail.yahoo.com/ym/
[email protected] ..
This practice is almost sinful, and just maybe, working together, we can make a difference. Thank you for your time, and thank you in advance for your help.
Now that you have read it you can do one of two things. You can forward it to everyone you know and start a possible groundswell against drug price gouging or you can delete it and continue to be robbed blind by high prescription prices. Which do you prefer?
Please note, this is regarding a dated subject, but! What about the artical in the recent ARP about people going to Canada to buy drugs, to save money?! I think I will change to Costco's pharmacy! Hugs, Jamie
