Jordan Goodman is the author of Everyone's Money Book, available at 888-201-6300. This is the third edition of the book. You can also visit his Web site at www.moneyanswers.com. He talks with us on Thursday mornings.

October 24, 2002

"Buying Prescription Drugs Online"

Consumers are having a hard time dealing with soaring prescription drug prices, which are up an average of 17 percent this year alone. Medicare still doesn’t cover drugs and many employer health plans are raising deductibles and co-payments so that employees have to pay more and more out of pocket for drugs.

There are three kinds of online pharmacies:
• Online divisions of regular pharmacies like www.CVS.com, www.Walmart.com, www.Riteaid.com and www.Walgreens.com. They offer discounts of around 25 percent on a wide array of drugs and have their registered pharmacists dispense the drugs. In some cases, you can order online and go to the local store to pick up the drugs.

• Online-only drugstores like www.Drugstore.com, www.Prescriptionsbymail.com and www.Familymeds.com. They sometimes offer even deeper discounts, but have no physical locations for consumers to visit. Some of these sites have an online questionnaire that you fill out, and is supposedly reviewed by a doctor before the prescription is filled, but you really don’t know who is approving the prescription.

• Canadian drugstores online like www.Canadameds.com, and many others. They offer the same prescription drugs at much bigger discounts because of the weak Canadian dollar, price controls, and Canada’s national healthcare system. Technically, Canadian pharmacies that receive orders from Americans have to have a Canadian doctor cosign the prescription sent by American doctors by fax or mail.

The movement to online pharmacies is very controversial for several reasons:
• Traditional pharmacies don’t like losing billions of dollars in business, so they have been lobbying to close them down. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy has been getting lots of complaints about online pharmacies not delivering drugs correctly, on time, or sometimes even at all. Kentucky bans filling of prescriptions based only on online questionnaires, and 22 states require a physical exam by a doctor before a prescription can be filled. At www.nabp.net, 12 online pharmacies have passed a voluntary certification program which includes an on-site visit.

• The rules surrounding purchases of drugs online with Canadian pharmacies are murky, and the FDA is worried people are getting drugs without proper supervision. Over 2 million drug packages a year arrive in the U.S. from Canada, the FDA says, and that number is rising fast. To find a list of Canadian online pharmacies, visit the Web site of the North American Pharmacy Accreditation Commission, www.napac.org.

• You can’t get handholding advice on taking the drug, or drug interactions, from an online pharmacy the way you can in person.

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