In December, we received notice from our insurance company that we needed to start filling the prescriptions that LuLu takes via mail order. The good news is that she’s been so stabilized on the same meds that the doctor has prescribed them at the same dosage for 6 months straight – which raised a red flag in the mail order pharmacy computer that we were mandatory candidates for filling 90-day prescriptions.

The touted benefit of mail order 90-day prescriptions versus a 30-day supply through our local pharmacy is savings. So, it was with great excitement that I opened the package yesterday to review the many bottles of pills and the receipt. But upon calculating things, it looks like we’re saving a whopping $20 per month on what used to be a $225 a month pharmacy bill.

Is it worth it? Depends on how you look at it I guess. It has been a royal pain in the rear end to change over the scripts. The mail order pharmacy takes 2 weeks to fill a prescription versus the 20 minutes locally. In each case, I had to get the doctor to issue a special 15-day supply through our local pharmacy to carry us over until the delivery could be made. (And boy did that cost us – so this first month absolutely NO savings have been realized.) I have it written on my calendar to order new meds plenty early next time, so we won’t run short again. However, each bottle says I’m not allowed to reorder them before a certain date.

The other disadvantage I can see is that Murphy’s Law dictates that the doctor will change one of her prescriptions just after we have refilled the 90-day supply, leaving us with 3 months’ worth of unusable medications, instead of the usual 30-day supply. So, if things start changing, we could quickly wipe out that monthly savings we’re supposedly gaining.

If we had chosen not to comply with their request, the price of our pharmacy-filled scripts would have jumped by 10%, so I supposed we are now saving roughly $40 a month if you want to look at it that way. And $480 a year is enough to sit up and take notice.

Still, I’m going to miss the folks at our local pharmacy. They have been extremely kind and helpful. While saving money is always my goal…I hate to give up that level of service.

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