On Monday night (July 22), Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for
channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by
pharmacies. He found in his investigation, that some of these generic
drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Yes, that's not a
typo.....
Three thousand percent! Mr. Wilson did a thorough research, and checked
out all the major drugstore chains, discount chains, independent
pharmacies, and even checked on some Canadian pharmacies.

So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs,
and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies
with the pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a
prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100.00
for 100 pills. The pharmacist might ell you that if you get the generic
equivalent, they would only cost $80.00, making you think you are
"saving" $20.00 What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100
generic pills may have only cost him $10.00!

At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson
whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this
practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their
cost for the generic drugs. They gave the link to Costco, which I will
include here, so that you can go and check prices for yourself.
www.costco.com Costco Online pharmacy Costco Online

I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get
it's online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with
the online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my
own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which helps prevent
nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent, which cost
$54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could
have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid
$72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.

I would like to mention, that although Costco is a "membership"
type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there,
as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the
door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in