A tool for hunting down prescription discounts

Hey there.

When it comes to getting your prescriptions for cheaper, there’s a whole universe of options out there. And not enough of us know about them.

None of these options will work for everyone. This is a set of patches for a broken system. But if there’s even one that works for you, we want to help you find it.

So today, we’re kicking off a series about how to get our prescriptions at a price we can afford. This will be part one of four newsletters on this topic (plus two podcast episodes, the first dropping tomorrow!)

We’ve covered this subject before, but this series will be more comprehensive and offer new tools to help you evaluate these options, thanks to folks in our audience who sent in their stories and advice when we asked.

We’re going to start by laying out one strategy for getting a deal on your prescriptions: going outside of insurance.

And — since the sheer volume of your options here can be kinda head-spinning — we have a tool that can help you keep them straight and compare prices.

Let’s get into it!

Your world of choices outside of insurance

1. You don’t have insurance.
2. This drug isn’t covered under your insurance.
3. You can’t afford the drug, even with insurance coverage.

In this scenario, it’s worth investigating other options.

We’ve built a spreadsheet and price comparison tool to help.

(Heck yeah, it’s color-coded. Shout out to our new intern Lauren for that legwork).

Here’s how it works.

Start with this template — you can download it as an Excel file or make a new copy in Google Sheets.

On the first tab, labeled “Start here,” you’ll find instructions and an outline of the options you’ll be exploring, including important caveats.

The second tab, “Compare prices,” is the actual worksheet you’ll use to compile and assess your options.

To show how it works, we’ll run a demo.

I’m going to use the generic drug droxidopa as an example — it’s a medication that treats low blood pressure — and it has wide price variations.

One option: Drug discount websites

You probably know at least one of these — GoodRx — and we’re including links to some others on the sheet. (If you Google “pharmacy coupon sites,” a bunch more will pop up.)

They all show real-time discounted prices at pharmacies near you, for just about any drug. But they don’t all show the same discounts, which is why it’s worth comparing them.

As you probably already know: Even with steep discounts, expensive drugs can still be super-expensive, especially for brand-name drugs.

Ok, the demo: We filled out the spreadsheet to see how the costs for droxidopa vary by discount site and pharmacy.

You’ll notice the prices for droxidopa are all over the map — ranging from less than $100 to over $2,000.

And: The template has a built-in system to highlight the cheapest option once you fill it in.

See how the spreadsheet lit up this cell in green? That’s the signal that you’ve found the lowest price.

Right now — when I enter a Brooklyn zip code — it’s looking like our best bet would be to use a coupon from the site WellRx at a store called New Trend Pharmacy.

The price spreads are definitely not always this dramatic. It totally depends on the medication.

And whatever deals you find, it’s worth checking back every so often. Prices also change — so a good deal through GoodRx one month might not be as good the next. (Or… it could be better. It depends!)

Another option: domestic online pharmacies

The best known might be Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, but there are others like HealthWarehouse and Marley Drug.1

These online pharmacies sell drugs directly to consumers, bypassing middlemen in the supply chain. And they’re stocked mostly with generic drugs.

We bopped around and found that Cost Plus had the best price for droxidopa by a long shot, at $32.28.

Caveats: Shipping costs can eat into your savings, getting drugs by mail isn’t for everyone, and some meds — including controlled substances like ADHD meds, which can’t legally be shipped — aren’t available at all.

One other place to look: International online pharmacies

Pharmacies in other countries — like Canada — can be an especially helpful option for brand-name drugs, since their retail prices tend to be lower abroad.

And yes, as the FDA outlines here, personal importation is legal (aside from controlled substances) up to a 90-day supply.

The tool Pharmacy Checker weeds out online-scam sites, which of course are a thing.

You can search by generic or brand. Watch out for getting prices for different pill counts.

Don’t forget good old mom-and-pops

Finally, you can ask what the cash price is at your local pharmacy. If you use a mom-and-pop pharmacy you might find they offer surprisingly good cash deals. Plus it’s more convenient than sending in a script to a new place.

ALSO: You probably noticed a bunch of other options on the spreadsheet — some of which you can use WITH insurance. We’re getting into those in next week’s newsletter.

And tomorrow, we’ll have a new episode about one listener who tried a bunch of these strategies to get a better deal, including — spoiler — a spreadsheet that inspired the one you see here!

…which should give you a sense of how rad that listener is and why you should listen.

And on that note: There are probably folks out there who are way more skilled at Excel than we are. And some of you might even have programming skills to get an AI to do all this work for us. This was just our first — very web 1.0 — stab at this.

So if you have a tool of your own you use for this kinda thing, or if you end up refining our tool — we’d love to see it! Please send your creations our way.

— Claire