Thursday, April 8, 2010

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.

2 comments:

Ali said...

I think the link on the health program card shows your personal info on there. Not sure if it's a big deal or if it's the same that they give to everyone. Just thought you'd like to know. While I'm typing, it's hard to find the 'comments' button on your blog entries. To continue with being random, my captcha word right now is 'manaid.' I'm not sure how that is supposed to be said but I am totally giggling over it man-aid? What an oxymoron!

MamaOnABudget said...

Manaid - just add water and a cup of sugar.

It's not my personal info. It's what they give everyone who uses it. I just did a google search to find the card again (I saw it on Swagbucks main page the other day and couldn't find it again).