Pharmacy Question...How Does walmart have $4 prescriptions?

over the counter generics are < $4. There are plenty of labs that can make the stuff to drive down the cost of the actual medicine. The problem with the Rx is the labor cost of filling the script.. They are probably taking a loss on the labor on filling the $4 script in hopes that you will buy other things at their store during the trip.

They get their shit from India.

WHAT?!?!?!??! no way..... thats impossible...

i wish my birth control pills were $4. they're like $20/month

I have a biz healthcare backgrund.. ITs pretty easy really. Here's how they do it.

- First of all its not all the meds. Its a list or formulary of drugs. The cheaper ones.

- All the Drugs are Generic. (not a bad thing)

- Its only for a 30 day supply.

- In most situations, and Walmart knows this, they are still getting paid more than $4.00 beacause they are still billing your insurance. They are simply making the co-pay for you $4.00 and taking a hit from what your normal copay is. Yes there are some CASH uninsured customers as well, but Walmart figures in most people are insured.

-Walmart does this to gain marketshare. Its a common and smart biz practice to sacrifice some profit to gain marketshare from your competition. This is a great marketing tactic to get into people's heads that "Walmart does 4.00 prescriptions"... Fact of the matter is many pharmacies do this now. In fact most do. The $4.00 thing is done almost everywhere now.

-Having had worked in a pharmacy, youd be suprised what "COST" really is for a lot of these drugs. For example a 100 count of your favorite Herpes meds is sold for over $100.00.... The cost is $12.00.... The cost of your basic Anti-Biotic like Amox is about 3.00 and sold for around 20.00....

Fast movers like Vicodin (generic), common antibiotics, common blood pressure meds, thyroid meds, all are pretty cheap in terms of cost. They still make money by billing the insurance company in full and by taking the loss for your co-pay. Cash customers (uninsured) they may be losing some $$, but its not much. The prescriptions on that list are all pretty cheap "cost" wise. And they calculate even if they lose money they still gain it in market share and marketabilty.

So you see its actually quite simple.


And thats how the world works.

Damn, its been a while since Ive actually had to post an intellgent thread.

BP4L baby.

planned parenthood = free

Actually your mistaken there is no insurance, My wife gets her scripts filled at target pays 4 bucks a month and they dont even know who her insurance is. Walmart also you to buy the $4 drugs its only four dollars no money from the insurance company.I come from a famiy that works in the medical field from hospitals to one of the biggest health insurance companies to pharma. One generics are very very cheap and secondly it gets you in the store. The drug store is never in the front of the store.

CVS is fucking you basically, same with Walgreens. I was as sick as a dog went to the doc in the box at walgreens. She asked where do you want it filled, I was sick so I said there. They banged me $120 for a generic, later I found out. What they do is instead of saying the generic costs us 5 cents a pill, they say what does the brand name cost and they discount it a few bucks from there. Once I got better I called costco the same generic I would of got for $10. Talking about a fuck job.

yeah, drugs are dirt cheap these days, especially if you are dealing in the quantities that walmart is dealing in

hell, you can get 40-90 generic hydrocodone for $10 at most pharmacies these days, and those are narcotic

my mood stablizers come in bottles of 60 and are only $11 without insurance

drugs are really cheap these days...

Tony just mentioned something that I was going to say. Wal-Mart is not the only place offering $4 prescriptions. I've also seen it at Sam's Club (of course, Wal-Mart), Target, Hy-Vee, and I'm willing to bet that Costco has it as well.

last year i had a bunch of prescriptions filled at target for $4 each. one of the same prescriptions was $20 at rite aid. guess where we'll be getting our prescriptions from now on.

another thing to consider regarding those $4 prescriptions at walmart and target is that people usually have to wait for them. while they wait, they have the entire store to find things to buy. i know when i got my scripts at target that we found stuff we needed anyway - probably over $50 worth each time. and for those who haven't shopped in a target or walmart before, they'll have time to see the prices and selection, so they may become regular shoppers.

wal-mart is $4? In Canada I just spent $185 getting some prevacid.. at walmart.. I guess it is an american thing

Excellent point. Very similar to coupons. I know that I can't go into Target without spending $50 on something.