Pharmacy War
For nearly all patients dealing with mental illness prescription medications are a necessity in treating the illness. Yes, there are some natural options out there and psychological therapy is also a very key component to treatment as well. Though, for the most part, you cannot get away with adequately treating the illness without some use of prescription medications. This post is not intended to get into the politics of large pharmaceutical companies, but more or less give you tips on saving money in paying for your prescriptions on a monthly basis.
Call your Insurer or Prescription Plan
Even with insurance or a prescription plan these medications can become very expensive on a monthly basis. We have discovered this first month after month paying for these prescriptions. We understand that making sure that my husband has his medications to take is very important in treating his illness. As a result our pharmacy bill is very high on our budget priority list. We found out very recently that due to some changes in the dosages on one of his medications the out of pocket cost was going to double. Though, after a call to our prescription plan we found that if we moved our prescriptions to the pharmacy that they partner with we would be paying the same amount for 90 days as we would for a 30 day prescription at our current pharmacy.
I’m going to stop here for a minute. I consider myself to have some sort of business sense and I respect and understand most basic business practices. However, I find it rather frustrating that as a consumer I cannot choose the pharmacy that I want to go to and pay the same out of pocket expenses for my prescriptions. I REALLY liked the pharmacy we were going to. It was a pharmacy at a regional grocery store very close to our home. I would go to the pharmacy sometimes several times in a week. It got to the point that when they saw me standing in line they had my prescriptions ready in hand for me. They really gave the feeling of being a small town pharmacy and went above and beyond to give me an extraordinary customer experience. This being said the pharmacy that we have to transfer to has dropped the ball THREE times in transferring some of our existing prescriptions to the new pharmacy. Whatever happened to “first impressions are the only impression?” I am stepping off of my soap box now.
Check for coupons
It doesn’t happen every week, but every now and again pharmacies will have specials in their store ads giving you a gift card every time you transfer or bring in a new prescription to their pharmacy. I’ve seen these gift cards at values from any where in the $5 range up to $25. These gift cards can often be used towards your next purchase. When I was living at home my mom did this so religiously that often times she would pay for all of her Christmas gifts using gift cards alone. Yes, she was a little extreme, but you can see the value in watching something like this.
Ask your doctor for coupons or samples
In this type of economy don’t hesitate to ask your doctor for coupons or samples. Sometimes they don’t think to outright offer the samples. Often times they try to reserve the samples for those patients that they are changing medications on and will be checking on them in a week or two to see if that change was affective. For example, they put my husband on Geodon last fall which ended up being his “wonder drug”. Well, they gave him a sample for 7 days before they wrote him a prescription to see if this medication at this dosage would be a good fit for him. So ask for samples and sometimes they will have coupons provided by the pharmaceutical company that makes the drug that will help with out of pocket costs at the pharmacy
Prescription Drug Financial Assistance
These days many of the large pharmaceutical companies will offer different types of financial assistance to help pay for the medications. To find out if the manufacturer of your prescription drugs offers this kind of program go to their main website and if there is a financial assistance program they will list their guidelines for the different kinds of programs that they offer and the application to apply for the assistance. The draw back is that for the most part the application process can take up to six weeks to process. So, this will not be a quick easy financial relief, but may help you out weeks down the road after you are approved for assistance.
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Great info! Can’t add too much more, but from personal experience we’ve done just about all of these options. The Rx prescription program was AWESOME. We did that through our County Mental Health center. That is something that might be an option for psychiatric visits. I don’t know if there are the equivalents of this in other areas, but here, it’s like the County Health Center…they offer lots of services free or nearly free. Through here, they had a person whose job it was to help get the Rx assistance. They also gave hubby TONS of samples. We’ve used the coupons too. Some drugs are super cheap, like Lithium. You can get that as low as $4 at Walmart. Prozac as well. Usually the older drugs are cheaper, and are also available generic. Unfortunately, many of the atypical antipsychotics (like Zyprexa or example) do NOT come in generic, and are also super expensive. And sometimes that drug is needed more than the others. Eli Lilly, who makes that and other drugs, has the Rx program.
Anyway, I guess I can’t add more except to say “AMEN” to everything you wrote!
Kimberly, great insight about your experience with your county mental health center. It is a great reminder to always check out local organizations to see if they have any programs that might help you with the costs of prescription medications.
Blessings,
Sara
Great info Sara! We switched from Wal-Mart to Costco pharmacy and are saving over $100/month, which makes it worth he $60 in gas to get to Costco and back once a month. I hear your frustrations with having to switch to less-than-convenient pharmacies just to save money. We are both going to start taking fish oil capsules high in EPA to supplement the vitamins/meds we already take. Keep up the posts! I really enjoy stopping by. I know I’m not alone in this battle for life and marriage.
Thanks Charity for the comment! As I mentioned in my post we also had to switch to a new pharmacy due to cost savings, and when you’re on one income with three kids savings really mean a lot. I’d be interested to hear how your vitamin supplementation works out. My husband does a lot better now on his medication, though a year ago (all last summer in fact) his medication would make him vomit on at least a daily basis, sometimes more. When you’re already dealing with severe mental illness I think adding physical side effects is like adding salt to the wound. So, since then I have always been interested in more of a natural approach, but psychiatrists aren’t too open with that approach. So keep me posted on your progress. I’m glad that you’re still enjoying these posts – I love writing them and love even more hearing from those who read the blog!
Blessings,
Sara
Asking the doctor about free samples is definitely helpful. They can usually give you at least a few months supply in order to figure out what to do.
Thank you for the feedback. Yes, samples are a great short term solution, though cannot be a replacement for a long term solution. I hope you are finding the information on this site helpful.
Blessings,
Sara Anderson
sara@thebipolarmarriage.com