Generic Prescription Pricing: Where's My Discount?

Kaisernetwork.org has a review of a WSJ article that ran yesterday showing how generic prescription drugs are often not saving the consumer much over the brand name version.

The example given is Zocor, priced at $149.99 for thirty 20mg tablets, now competing with generic simvastatin which was being sold anywhere from $125 to $139.99. When called on it, Walgreens, CVS and drugstore.com dropped their prices.

Walgreens went down to $89.99, CVS to $79.99, and drugstore.com dropped to... get this... $27.99!

Amazing.

That's a cut from $4.17 to 93 cents per pill.

Even more amazing, all three of them claimed they dropped the price as part of their regular price reviews.

;o)

The New York State Attorney General's Web site has a prescription drug price compare tool that allows you to compare prices on a number of medications.

Just for fun, I punched in my ZIP code and reviewed the prices for the same thirty 20mg prescription.

For Zocor, at the pharmacies in and around my ZIP code, I have a range of $100.02 up to $199.28, which works out to $3.37 to $6.64 a pill.

I then went to pharmacychecker.com and found a range of prices for 20mg Zocor from $1.01 to $5.17 a pill.

Admittedly, some of those prices were for larger purchases, the $1.01 price was for 90, and most of the cheaper prices were from Canadian pharmacies, but still, come on. If pharmacy A can sell it for a buck then pharmacy B probably doesn't need to be selling it at $6 a pop.

To compare drug prices in your area, visit Consumer Health Ratings and see if they have a prescription drug price site in your state.

--

The flip side.

I'm not 100% certain Zocor makes for a fair comparison. I'm sure I know a lot less than the Wall Street Journal about these things, but am I wrong in thinking that Merck slashed prices on Zocor in an effort to retain market share once the patent ran out?

If so, then there shouldn't be that huge of a gap between brand and generic pricing, in this instance. Right? If you know better, comment please.

However, according to this release from January 2006, at least one watchdog - the NY State Alliance for Retired Americans - has been watchdogging the issue for a while.‎