Big Pharma Phlop

[theindependenteye]

We're new to Big Pharma, having had, between the two of us, a grand total of one prescription, which costs us all of $40/yr -- at the RiteAid, no less. So when Conrad was discharged from the SF hospital with a bunch of prescriptions (from a Nurse Practitioner affiliated with the surgeon), I naively took them to the RiteAid. When the bill showed $132 for a 2-month supply of that particular statin, I hollered Halt! and said, just gimme one month.

So we go for the one-week checkup to CB's Sebastopol cardiologist, the dude who is actually in charge of this from here on out, and he said, "Well, I'd rather you took a different statin, not so heavy-duty and milder side-effects, and by the way, have you checked out the pharmacy at Target?" TARGET?!!! So OK, instead of $66/mo, we're $8/mo. Cool.

So how can Target do this? Here's something from a blog:

"Pharmacy tech checking in. Not counting overhead like our payroll and such, the drugs on the $4 list are all cheap. Our markup on them isn't ridiculous or anything, but most of those are around 5 dollars for a 100 count bottle, some are cheaper, some are slightly more expensive. On the low end, $2 or so, and I haven't looked at cost on all of them to give a good idea on the high-end prices. But as far as average wholesale price, we are not losing money on most, if not all of them."

But if anybody's taking atorvastatin 20 mg, the one we're not gonna use, and you want to contact me, please do. It's a perfectly good med, we just aren't going to use what we've got. -- Elizabeth Fuller