Pill Prices: Even When You're Sick, It Pays to Shop Around

by Judy Silberstein

(May 28, 2003) Intrigued by an e-mail chain letter warning of “generic drug price gouging by pharmacies,” Mamaroneck resident Anne Herman did a quick check on the price of an expensive brand name anti-inflammatory she’d been taking for wrist pain. Result: CVS’s price was $90 and Costco’s online price was $73.97. That motivated her to forward the e-mail on to the Larchmont Gazette for further study.

What We Found

The chain-mail described research by Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit. (See: Markups on Generic Prescription Drugs) who found tremendous differentials between various pharmacies and price mark-ups as high as “3,000% or more. Yes, that’s not a typo…three thousand percent!” claimed the letter-writer, cleg@bignet.net.

Was this a spoof? One of those chain-mail hoaxes? According to Snopes, the Urban Legends Reference website, the information in the letter is accurate and refers to an actual Wednesday, September 25, 2002 report by Wilson.

What About Local Prices?

So do prices vary as radically in Larchmont as they do in Detroit? Local residents have easy access to three CVS stores, two independent pharmacies (Buck’s and Almarc) and a Costco down the road in New Rochelle.

A call to the new CVS in Larchmont yielded the following base-line data for 100 tablets of 10 mg strength Prochlorperazine, the generic equivalent of Compazine, a medication prescribed to prevent nausea in chemotherapy patients and the one mentioned by cleg:

$92.99 -- CVS

What about Costco, recommended by Wilson as having relatively small mark-ups on generic drugs?

$23.49 -- Costco

Almarc, on Palmer Avenue in Larchmont, was almost as low, and offered local delivery for only a dollar. “With the rising price of medication, we try to keep competitive low prices in our pharmacy,” said pharmacist Anthony. 'We realize people are on fixed incomes, especially senior citizens."

$24.90 -- Almarc

But the lowest price of all was from Buck’s on Chatsworth Avenue, which also offered delivery. “Most independents are less than the chains,” claimed Howard at Buck’s.

$19.95 – Buck’s

Asked to comment on their prices, a CVS spokesperson at the corporate headquarters in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, explained, “CVS has what it calls ‘competitive pharmacy pricing.’ We go out and check the market regularly to make sure we’re price-competitive. In some cases we may be higher, in some we may be lower. But we do investigate every price inquiry.”

The spokesperson will be checking prices in Larchmont and will make changes as necessary. “That’s our normal business practice,” he said.

Lesson Learned

Sometimes those “urban legends” circulating the Internet contain valuable nuggets of information. Larchmonters looking to fill prescriptions would be wise to shop around and to ask the pharmacist for a price check if the bill looks high.