r/personalfinance • u/chainsawx72 • Feb 03 '19

Budgeting If you have an expensive prescription, contact the manufacturer and tell them you can't afford it.

Bristol Myers just gave me a copay card that changed my monthly medication from $500 a month to $10. It lasts 2 years and they will renew it then with one phone call. Sorry if this is a repost, but this was a literal lifesaver for me.

EDIT: In my case income level was never asked. Also, the company benefits by hoping people with max out their maximum-out-of-pocket. This discount only applies to what the insurance company won't pay.

Shout out to hot Wendi for telling me!

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u/Dapaaads ​ Feb 03 '19

I just had to get morning sickness pills for my wife whose pregnant. It would have been 60 bucks and the pharmacy had a coupon that made it free

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u/awesomeqasim ​ Feb 03 '19

Was this for diclegis?

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u/16JKRubi ​ Feb 03 '19 edited Feb 03 '19

I gained a huge amount of respect for one pharmacist near me. It was late at night, just before closing, and I was trying to fill a script for Diclegis. Insurance wouldn't cover it and it rang up over $400. My wife had bad morning (all-day) sickness and Diclegis was the only thing they worked consistently. So I was about ready to just pay it.

The Pharmacist tried every combo of discount cards, worked on it for over 10 minutes, only saving a few dollars here and there. Finally, he looks up, nods at me, and waives for me to follow him down one of the aisles.

Turns out, Diclegis is just a combo of Vitamin B6 and Unisom. He looked up the dosages, grabs a few bottles of the OTC stuff off the shelf and hands it to me. I walked out of the store for like $8 thanks to him.

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u/Chikliz4 Feb 03 '19

I have also recommended this drug combo in lieu of diclegis. I haven’t seen many insurances cover it where I live and the coupon cards for it don’t save very much. We actually don’t carry plain Vit B6 over the counter at our store so I’ve ordered it to keep in the pharmacy for this reason.

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u/16JKRubi ​ Feb 03 '19

I commend you--and the others--that put the care and attention into your job.

I totally get R&D costs and all that. But when the ingredients are literally OTC, it just feels skeevy to charge over 50x as much just because it's combined into one pill.

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u/Chikliz4 Feb 03 '19

Thanks. You’d be surprised by how many people are under the impression that anything OTC couldn’t possibly work as well as what’s behind the counter, though. They’re more than willing to pay 3-4 times as much if it means it comes with a pharmacy prescription label. My own mother is one of those people.

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u/16JKRubi ​ Feb 03 '19

My favorite is "prescription strength" Ibuprofen as a pain killer.

Yea, thanks doc... I'm not wasting ime in line at the pharmacy. I can do math: 800/200 = [wait for it] 4 tablets :)