Your State May Have a Prescription Drug Price Finder
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We’re big fans of local resources because they tend to do a better job of meeting our specific needs. That’s why we were simultaneously excited and disappointed at the prescription drug price finders we found.
A number of states offer tools that will help you find better prices on your prescriptions. We could find twelve state sites (Wisconsin thinks it’s part of Canada) that allow you to search pharmacies in your area for specific medicines. It’s difficult to tell how accurate they are, but they’re certainly worth a try.
Unless you only have one prescription, drug price shopping is not a matter of finding the cheapest pharmacy, it’s finding the cheapest pharmacy for each prescription. Even if you have a Medicare Part D supplier, price shopping is important for avoiding the coverage gap.
One study by Center for Studying Health System Change noted, “This analysis found that pharmacies were not consistently high- or low-priced relative to others in the market. Instead, pharmacies that were in the lowest price bracket for some drugs tended to be in the highest price bracket for others.”
The Wisconsin site bypasses local pharmacies in favor of Canadian pharmacies that, “…have been visited and found to be safe, reputable, and reliable by inspection on behalf of several state governors.”
Here are the twelve that we found. If you know of any more, let us know.
Connecticut
Florida
Indiana
Maryland
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Vermont
Wisconsin (order from Canada)
We like the idea of putting more transparency into the prescription shopping process; it can only lead to lower prices. But these sites are far from perfect and they only cover twelve of 50 states and Washington D.C. And word is that Washington and Ohio dropped their prescription price comparison sites.
Please follow the instructions from your state’s site and use at your own risk. Let us know what you think.
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