Uninsured and taking prescription medications?

That's the boat I've found myself in. Sure, you can pay $30 a year to Walgreens and get their overpriced drugs brought town to just slightly more than everywhere else.

Or I can give you another reason to join Swagbucks.

I take a brand-name thyroid medication. I can't take generics on this medication for multiple reasons, so the $4 generics at the major chains won't work for me. We are currently uninsured, so I've been eating the whole cost of this medication - ranging from $18-23 a month depending on where you fill it. I've been filling it at Wal-Mart (and, coincidentally, I paid $23 one month and $18 the next without changing a thing). This month, through tomorrow, there was a coupon at coupons.com for a free $25 gift card to Rite Aid if you transferred a prescription to them that you have never filled at Rite Aid before. So I decided to give it a go if the price was similar to Wal-Mart. It's quite a drive out to Rite Aid for me - about 40 minutes - but I was going to be in that area today anyway.

Their cost was $19.99 for 30 pills. I brought in this printout from the Swagbucks HealthAdvantage Program. I'm gonna be honest here: I figured for something that was free on the internet, it probably wouldn't be worth all that much. But in today's economy, every penny counts - I'll give it a shot.

I brought my prescription, my coupon, and my print out. I said, "I've never used this before - I don't know if it will even do anything for this prescription, but if you'd try, I'd really appreciate it." They said no problem - they had never seen it before, but they'll try running it at check-out.

It saved me $8.37!

I almost fell over when I saw that! I figured it might knock off $.50 - maybe a buck. But over $8 was HUGE to us. In the end, I got my $20 prescription for $11.62 - and got a $25 gift card!

I don't know if you even have to sign up for Swagbucks to use the discount card. I don't think you do. But I don't understand why you wouldn't want to. I have never paid them a cent of money, and in return for doing my internet searching through them, I've received $130 in Amazon gift certificates - and I'm not that far off from another $5 certificate.

I'll be really honest - I don't know if I'll keep going out to Rite Aid for this prescription or not. I went for the $25 gift card to get more supplies for our container garden (and spoil my kids a little). But with as great of a discount as I got there for this HealthAdvantage Program card, I just might go back if the discounts aren't as great at other stores. Where can you use it? It says it's is accepted at over 50,000 pharmacies nationwide. Here are a few of the "most recognizable" stores they list:

Albertsons
Bi-Lo
Costco
CVS
Duane Reade
Eckerd
Fred’s Stores
Giant Eagle
HY-Vee
Kerr
Kmart
Kroger
Longs
Meijer
Osco
Pamida
Publix
Rite Aid
Safeway
Sav-on
Schnucks
Supervalu
Target
Tops
Walgreens
Walmart
Wegmans

So get out there, save some money through Swagbucks and their HealthAdvantage Program. I'm not sponsored by Swagbucks or anything - this is just a really happy user and fan spreading the word about a great free service offered by Swagbucks.com.