Last year whilst in Florida for 6 months I discovered that with all the heat & humidity that I truly needed my daily blood pressure medication pills, that I had run out of, along with my Cholesterol (Statins) and Celebrex (wonder stiff joints) prescriptions. To get prescription refills was $70 to get in the door At Urgent Care where a nurse practitioner at least look my BP before writing refill prescriptions for those 3 drugs, but asI was her "new patient" she could only write me prescriptions for one month, rather than the usual 3 months (90 days) in Canada. I'm convinced that she wanted me to return in 30 days for another $70 at UC, but I bitched and complained enough that she added two refills of one month for each drug. At the Public grocery store pharmacy where I went to fill the new prescriptions I was told that my Blue Cross Health/Dental/Travel medical package was recognized in USA to limit prescription prices to $15/drug/3 months (so C$45 for a 3 month supply in Canada). The 30 days of Celebrex was really expensive and as I still had a small supply of older 200mg (yellow) pills I just filled the 30 days of BP and Cholesterol pills and that was US$175! By chance I ran into a pharmacy assistant who used to work at that Publix Pharmacy and I discussed the crazy prescription prices in USA and he told me, "Didn't that Indian pharmacist tell you about the GoodRx website to reduce prices for generic prescription drugs". I confronted the Indian Publix pharmacist about this and he became very embarrassed and told me to get the drug codes off that GoodRx website and give them to him to reduce drug prices Since I was having difficulty with the public wi-fi connection he did this himself and gave me a 3 month supply of those 3 drugs for $65 versus $1075 would you believe? The week before driving to California for a wedding last February I came down with a very nasty rash on the upper part of my legs and buttocks and returned to the Urgent Care facility for another $70 admission and this time I saw the lead Dr. Javed who fixed me up from an apparent swimming pool bacteria infection with a $50 steroid shot, a $50 cortisone shot and 4 prescriptions filled there for $15 apiece ($60), one of which was 2.5% Cortisone Steroid cream. Dr. Javed also wrote me another 3 month prescription for those original 3 drugs, plus gave me a couple more tubes of 2.5% Cortisone Steroid cream, and when that Publix pharmacist saw me coming he immediately grabbed it and quickly filled it for just $65, so I ended up with a 6 month supply of my drugs for US$130 (versus C$90 back home), so pretty good. Dr. Javed even gave a "freebie" UC visit before I left for California to make sure everything was healing up okay, which was very nice of him. All of these medical travel amounts were later reimbursed by Blue Cross on my return to Canada, to the tune of C$1075.
So the moral of this story is if you are ever travelling in the USA and require prescription drug refills use the GoodRx website, enter the names (one by one) of your drugs and the name of the pharmacy where you wish to have your Generic prescription drugs filled and you will save a bundle of money!
It’s a bitch getting old, Kilburn.
We tell the kids we’re spending their inheritance on prescription drugs & medical ongoing repairs.
They now say we overmedicated and a pair of
geriatrics.
