Save money when you buy prescription and over-the-counter drugs online.
Buying medications online can be many things. Most over-the-counter drugs are available online. This provides access to drugs you may not be able to buy locally, or options to buy them at a deep discount. For prescription drugs, buying online can result in considerable cost savings, better options, and convenience. Most online options also side step insurance. If you don’t have any insurance coverage or your pharmacy coverage is lacking, using an online pharmacy may be your best bet. Buying online works best for long-term medications as they typically take a few days to process and ship your order.
Our Favorites
HoneyBee Health – Based in California, this has been a favorite option for years. HoneyBee only offers generic prescription medications but they have an extensive inventory. They also offer the option of multiple generic “brands” for a drug. This is highly sought after for people with allergies to certain drug additives like binder ingredients. Some generics also differ enough that people find one effective and a different brand is not. You can pick which generic is used to fill your order. Prices are deeply discounted with many medications at about $10 for 30 days. They don’t take insurance but the cash price is typically less than many people would pay in copays.
Amazon Pharmacy – Amazon’s expansion into pharmacy offerings includes deep discounts for brand and generic prescriptions, many as low as $1 cash price. If you have a Prime subscription you also get free 2-day shipping. Amazon allows you to use your insurance if you want to and shows you the price both with and without insurance so you can pick the best deal. This does come with a caveat, not everything here is cheap, just like you would find at a brick-and-mortar pharmacy. This still may offer enough savings and convenience to beat out other options.
Cost Plus – This is the online pharmacy run by Mark Cuban. This new company attempts to cut out middlemen and offer pharmacy drugs to people at just slightly over cost. They don’t take insurance and cash prices vary but prices appear to be reasonable for most drugs.
Over The Counter
Buying over-the-counter meds online may be a better deal than buying them locally. For something you take frequently, purchasing bulk packs online may provide cost savings. Online options may provide a better selection than what is available locally and come with the convenience of home delivery. Amazon has an ever-increasing selection. We found various over-the-counter medications that were hard to find locally like Nasalcrom.
If you have a Costco membership, they will ship their selection of bulk over-the-counter drugs to your home. If you don’t have a Costco membership, Amazon carries most of the Costco Kirkland over-the-counter medications with free Prime shipping. Larger pharmacy chains like CVS and Walgreens offer online purchasing and a wider selection. This is a great option if you live somewhere that lacks one of these chains or decent local offerings.
What To Watch For
Online pharmacies can be anything from a well-known reputable source to reliable pharmacies outside the US that ship internationally, to questionable and dangerous. Minnesota used to run a verification program on Canadian pharmacies that would do business with people in the US. This provided some assurance that you were dealing with a reputable pharmacy. As that program ended it has been harder to verify who is a reliable player and who isn’t.
When looking at pharmacies outside the US, look for a verifiable physical address. Look for verifiable registrations for the pharmacy in the country of residence. Many of the online pharmacies in the UK offer a discounted online physician review or telehealth appointment before they will prescribe medication. If you need something that is hard to get in the US or that is much cheaper in the UK, this may be an option but do your homework first.
An additional loophole is medications that are over the counter in other countries that are still prescription in the US. For years Voltaran topical, a go-to arthritis treatment was excessively expensive and required a prescription in the US while it was quite cheap and over the counter in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe. Oral medications and “in demand” medications are a much higher risk to buy this way.
You can save money and time by buying drugs online if you use a bit of caution and know where to look.