Buying Your Prescription Drugs Online

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Drug Prices March Upward;
Are There Prescription Drug Bargains Online?

The sluggish economy may be pushing down prices on things like computer gear and men's shirts, but prescription-drug prices continue to rise at a staggering rate. Are there any bargains to be found?

Online pharmacies have been marketing themselves as the answer, and their sales are surging on the promise they can provide cheaper drugs and more convenience than the corner drug store. At Drugstore.com, one of the largest of the pharmaceutical Web sites, prescription-drug sales jumped 52% to $28.5 million in the second quarter from a year ago. Everyone from well-established brick-and-mortar chains such as CVS and Rite-Aid, to shady operators that peddle bootleg Viagra, are hanging out shingles on the Web. Earlier this year the giant retailer Wal-Mart Stores opened its own online pharmacy.

How does our local pharmacist stack up against the Internet competition? (see chart here)

Savings are a rarity in the prescription-drug world: Prices in the U.S. jumped 17% last year to $154 billion, according to the nonprofit National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation.

We decided to log on to several Web pharmacies and order prescription asthma inhalers (which we need to cope with a nasty cat allergy) to take a measure of how their service stacks up against an old-fashioned live pharmacist, Manny, at a drugstore across the street from our office in New York. We paid cash for our prescriptions, but all the companies we used accept insurance plans.

We found that the online experience can vary considerably -- starting with price. The cheapest order was a mere $5.41 at Drugstore.com for the generic version of the asthma drug we wanted (including shipping) all the way up to $34.06 for the brand-name version at PrescriptionsByMail.com, owned by PBM Pharmacies.

Customer service was all over the place. One of the sites didn't even tell us the price when we ordered. And you'd better not have an allergic reaction to long waits: Our package from CVS.com took more than two full weeks to arrive.

A growing number of Americans are also flocking to Canadian-based Web sites, where price controls and the weak local currency make prescription drugs cheaper than in the U.S. The Food and Drug Administration says about two million packages containing drugs from foreign sources enter the U.S. each year in the mail. But buyer beware -- no matter what the Web sites say, purchasing drugs from Canada is illegal, the FDA says.

Of the Web sites we tested, the best overall was Drugstore.com. A $10 discount for first-time customers made the order about a third of the price of the next-least-expensive medication. Drugstore.com also was the speediest: Our inhaler arrived in exactly one week.

Still, the search function could use some work. Searching for "Ventolin" -- the brand name of the drug -- yielded four different possibilities, including a syrup that the site said was discontinued by the manufacturer. (A spokeswoman says the Web site includes a reference to the syrup because some customers have questions about it, but it plans to delete it soon.) One nice feature: Once we figured out which product we wanted, we were automatically given the much cheaper price of the generic (Albuterol), as well as detailed directions on how to use it.

Once the order was confirmed, we were told to have our doctor phone or fax in the prescription. For all the sites, the ordering process is much quicker for refills.

CVS.com's drug information is written in much easier-to-understand language than drugstore.com -- and also includes an interesting explanation of how the drug actually works in your body. The site also contacted our doctor for us to get the prescription -- one less hassle for us.

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We had to go through a few extra steps to figure out the price, however. Instead of including prices with the product, CVS.com tucks the prices away in another section. Also, the site listed only the price for the generic version. We had to send an e-mail to request a price quote for the name-brand version. CVS.com sent a response the next day.

CVS.com has some odd ideas about cross-selling, too: When we placed our order, the site tried to sell us a poison-ivy wash and a "premium nut mix."

CVS's shipping also was the costliest of the bunch, $4.95 for regular shipping (shipping is free on orders more than $45), compared with $1.49 for drugstore.com and $1.95 for PrescriptionsByMail.com. CVS says the tardiness we experienced was unusual.

We had high hopes for PrescriptionsByMail.com, a smaller outfit that has a number of cool-sounding features. One of the most intriguing says: "Can't read your doctor's writing? Click here to let us figure it out." We clicked, and clicked, but it never worked. The company says it hasn't previously received complaints about the handwriting-deciphering feature.

We also posed a question using the "Ask my pharmacist" feature, to ask if the jitteriness we felt after taking two puffs of the inhaler is dangerous. While we did get a response the next day, the site's bedside manner was abrupt. "It's a normal side effect of the active ingredient Albuterol. No way around it," we were told via e-mail. A spokesman defended the response, saying "That is a good question to pose to a doctor, not a pharmacist."

Manny, our pharmacist at the Battery Park Pharmacy across the street from our office, happily answered the question. He suggested we wait 15 minutes before taking the second puff. The lag time should cut down on the jitteriness, he said. (And it did.) Manny had other advantages, too. He addressed us by name when we approached the counter, and we were out the door with our new inhaler in just five minutes.

Click here to see the comparison chart.

Source: WSJ - Aug. 19, 2002

Drug Prices March Upward; Are There Prescription Drug Bargains Online?

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Drug Prices March Upward;
Are There Prescription Drug Bargains Online?