By SYLVIA GORDON
Guest Columnist
If you are approaching Medicare, the biggest shock is the price of medications. People hear good things about Medicare. Medicare runs well. With thousands of clients, we get very, very few complaints a year. But the complaints that do come in almost always center around drug costs.
Enter Good Rx: A free discount card that can potentially save you hundreds of dollars a year.
If you have Medicare Advantage or a standalone Part D drug plan, and your drug co-pay is $40 or higher, chances are very good that you can save money by not using your insurance card and instead using a discount card.
But not all discount cards are created equal. Look at the bottom of your internet search for a drug using your discount card. Does it say “Estimated price” or “Price may vary”? If so, you will likely be charged an additional fee at the pharmacy. Known as a dispensing fee, the pharmacy may add in a fee from 50 cents up to $5 per prescription. It’s still a savings, but not what you looked up on the handy phone app. Five extra dollars isn’t a terrible bait and switch, but there might be more in store for you in a few months.
Here is how that can play out. You see that you can save $20 per month on drug X. After a few months, you notice you are only saving $10 per month. Still a savings, but maybe not as big of a savings as another drug discount card offers. The first card did that on purpose to get you to start using them, then raised the price after you started using them.
When you use a discount card one time, the pharmacy stores that information in the patient’s profile, so you’ll get the discount that card offers in the future. But beware – you might need to keep comparing discount cards and not rely on your initial research.
The majority of people using a drug discount card are using one of these three: GoodRx, SingleCare or GlicRx. You can find all of these cards online and compare prices against your insurance plan.
Sylvia Gordon is the president of Gordon Marketing, headquartered in Noblesville, where she trains on Medicare and Social Security in all 50 states. You can contact her at sgordon@gordonmarketing.com.