Walgreens Prescription Savings Club
This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
Walgreens is doing everything it can to help ease the burden created after the unsuccessful negotiations with Express Scripts. They are offering a special discount on annual membership for its Walgreens Prescription Savings Club .
For $10 a year, a family membership covers everyone in your immediate family, including a spouse, dependents 22 and younger and pets. Individuals may join for $5. Join and receive discount prices on your prescriptions.
You will save on more than 8,000 brand-name and all generic medications and also discounts on flu shots, pet prescriptions, nebulizers and diabetic supplies. You will also receive bonuses when you purchase Walgreens brand products and photofinishing services.
For those who are not familiar with the Walgreens and Express Script here are some interesting details http://bit.ly/y6RTpL. You will also receive more information if you follow Walgreens on Twitter and Walgreens on Facebook.
Basically Walgreens is no longer part of Express Scripts’ pharmacy provider network as of Jan. 1, 2012. This includes all Walgreens pharmacies nationwide and Duane Reade pharmacies in the New York City area.
This situation of forcing pharmacy patients to go elsewhere to use their in-network pharmacy benefits was unnecessary. Express Scripts’ actions are causing disruption with no significant benefit to patients or their health plan. Patients covered by an Express Scripts plan now find themselves not only having to change their pharmacists, but many are having to drive farther to get prescriptions filled at pharmacies with less convenient hours for their hectic schedules. Walgreens offers more 24-hour and drive-thru pharmacies than any other pharmacy in the country.
And patients are not seeing their costs go down in exchange for the increased hassle they’re being subject to. It’s all pain with no gain.
During negotiations, Walgreens offered to hold rates for a new contract flat and did not seek an increase in rates. The response from Express Scripts was to insist on being able to unilaterally define contract terms, such as what does and does not constitute a brand and generic drug. Express Scripts also proposed to slash Walgreens reimbursement rates to levels below the industry average cost to provide each prescription.
Express Scripts itself has stated that clients will not see any significant savings from excluding Walgreens from its network. In fact, costs may even go up without Walgreens because we offer competitive pricing, additional savings by dispensing less expensive generic drugs more often than other pharmacies, and savings through 90-day supplies of medications at our retail pharmacies versus three, 30-day refills.
Express Scripts could offer substantial savings to its clients by promoting 90-day refills at retail pharmacies, but it conflicts with its own mail order 90-day prescription business that it profits from. In addition, while profits per prescription among retail pharmacies have been flat or declining in recent years, Express Scripts’ profits have grown at a rate more than two times the average of peers in health care.
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