$4 Drug Program Could Save Billions

U.S. consumers could save billions of dollars by filling prescriptions for inexpensive generic drugs at stores such as Wal-Mart and Target, according to a new report.

A growing number of national chain pharmacies offer the generic form of a range of drugs — including anti-allergy medications, antidepressants, antibiotics, and cholesterol-lowering drugs — for $4 for a 30-day supply. However, researchers found that less than 6 percent of people who could use such a program take advantage of it — costing both consumers and the government extra bucks.

All told, the United States could save as much as $5.8 billion, according to the study.

Back in 2007, when the research was conducted, "I think a lot of people probably didn't know" about these programs, Dr. Yuting Zhang, the lead author of the study from the University of Pittsburgh, told Reuters Health.

In addition, though the overall cost savings is high, "the majority of people don't really save much, so it's not worth it for them to go to the trouble to have to switch their pharmacy plans," she said.

Zhang and her colleagues examined a sample of about 30,000 people that were representative of the general U.S. population in 2007. About 14,000 of them filled at least one prescription for a brand name or generic drug that year, and slightly more than half of those drugs were available as generics through a $4 drug program.

However, only about 6 percent of people whose prescriptions were available through the discount programs got their drugs that way. That means there are about 50 million U.S. adults who could be using the programs but aren't.

Under most prescription plans, patients pay an average of about $10 for a one-month supply of a generic drug and $25 or more for a brand name drug. One goal of healthcare reform has been to save money by encouraging the use of generic drugs, when they are available.

The authors calculated that if everyone in the country who had a prescription included in the $4 programs used one of them, U.S. consumers would save more than $3 billion a year, and the government would save about $1 billion a year in Medicare costs.

Under that scenario, each person would save an average of $64 annually, but the savings, not surprisingly, would be concentrated among those people filling the most prescriptions, the authors report in a letter in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Dr. John Agwunobi, president of health and wellness at Wal-Mart, told Reuters Health that "the study does point to the need for more people to consider using lower cost generics."

With programs offering cheap generic drugs becoming more available through different retailers and over the Internet, he said there is a real opportunity for many more patients to be using these programs — including those that might not otherwise fill their prescriptions because they can't afford to.

"There are still many Americans today who are on pharmaceuticals who don't realize that they could save money if they looked for a $4 prescription program," Agwunobi said. "There's really no excuse now for people to be spending so much more than they need to for the medications that they need to stay healthy."

While the authors are careful to say that they "are not attempting to promote Wal-Mart or any other specific pharmacy," Zhang said that the findings suggest that more doctors should be talking to their patients about the possibility of getting their medications through one of these programs.

"When they prescribe certain drugs, especially if they talk to patients and it seems like cost is a big concern, they probably should be aware" of these programs, Zhang said. "It doesn't occur to (doctors) that it's their responsibility to tell them about the low-cost alternative."