EDITORIAL
The Packet Group
coming weeks, you may want to call ahead and get a prescription filled. That’s because, according to the New Jersey Prescription Drug Price Registry, many popular prescriptions appear to be cheaper there than here — sometimes, substantially cheaper.
The registry has been collecting data on the prices pharmacies charge customers, posting the results on a searchable database at njconsumeraffairs.gov.
There, you’ll probably find that picking up your Lipitor (10 MG) at Rands Professional Pharmacy on Hooper Avenue, will cost $75.28 for 30 tablets.
Locally, this prescription drug costs $104.10 at Hopewell Pharmacy; $93.59 at The Medicine Shoppe on Route 179, Lambertville; $108.30 at McGrath Pharmacy on Lawrence Road; and $99 plus change at both Shop Rite Pharmacy and Eckerd Drugs, both on Route 31 in the Pennington area.
The registry also reports pharmacies in Atlantic City charge from $77 to $105 for 30 tablets of 10 MG Lipitor.
If you need Albuterol (90 MCG inhaler), it’s cheaper for the same quantity (17) at Shop Rite on Route 31 than it is at Eckerd (Pennington Shopping Center). There’s a $16 difference. Prices aren’t much different in Lambertville, but in Lawrence, there is quite a discrepancy. McGrath’s charges over $46, while CVS at Route 1 and Texas Avenue charges $27.99.
Has it ever been more important to be an informed consumer?
For many people, this information will be meaningless — after all, their insurance or HMO pays it, so who cares what the pharmacy charges?
With insurance and medical care costs continuing to burden more employers and families, we all need to care. Every candidate for the presidency has a plan and a policy, and either way, big changes are coming.
As pharmaceutical treatments become available for almost all medical conditions (even lots of less-than-life threatening conditions), the costs of prescription drugs is a major part of what we pay for medical care, and variations in pricing as revealed by the registry is enough to make many run for their Prilosec.
But it really highlights the runaway peculiarities of our current medical system — all of the charges for these medications are much more than you’d pay if you visit Toronto, and that’s not because of Canada’s universal health care system.
It’s because Americans are being gouged by a grossly inefficient and callous system.
In his book “The New American Story,” former Sen. Bill Bradley offers a recipe for real and meaningful improvement to medical care in the U.S. Among the suggestions are meaningful tort reform to enable medical professionals to own up to mistakes without sacrificing legal protection, standardization of paperwork to eliminate errors, and a free market for pharmaceuticals.
While none of the plans to address the crushing costs of medical care mentioned so far in the national campaigns have focused on these basic ideas, perhaps we could make more improvements by addressing such issues first.
Until then, shop around and do your insurance provider the minimal favor of buying drugs at the lowest cost you can get.
Perhaps then some of those “market forces” can be brought to bear on prescription drug prices.