How to use the Generic Psychiatric Medication Spreadsheets
By Benjamin Crocker, MD

The attached Spreadsheets are intended to get people interested in finding out more about the prices of medicines they buy. The prices they list were recorded in the winter of 2007, and probably will change: they are offered as examples, got gospel. You will do well to check current prices by either calling the pharmacies or looking their formularies up on the internet, or getting them to mail you copies.

What I want people to see is that the prices for these medicines are different in different places. Sometimes there are big differences. Because people have a choice of where to buy their medicines, knowing how to find the best price is important.

If you were going to buy gasoline or bananas, you would expect to see prices posted. Most shoppers would not buy $6 gas or $2 bananas. The way medications are sold now, it would be like people buying gas without asking what the price was first, with one station selling it for $2 a gallon, the next one $4 a gallon and then one down the road for $1. People are not used to shopping for medication prices like they are for other things.

Of course, if someone put up a sign that they were selling gas for 29 cents a gallon or bananas for 10 cents a pound you might wonder what they were really selling. There are differences between different suppliers of generic medications. In general these are slight, and the federal government requires that all generic medications sold in the US meet certain standards. But sometimes one might work better than another, and sometimes an expensive brand-name medication works best. Usually a car or a boat will get you where you need to go, but sometimes you need an ambulance or an airplane.

I have made these spreadsheets to compare plans that are similar, for similar amounts of medication. Some of these plans are limited to just certain amount, and priced by the number of pills: other plans cover a period of time with pretty much whatever number of pills you need. I have put these two kinds of plans on different sheets.

I have put some medications that are not covered by Medicare D on these sheets. The most common medicines that Medicare D won’t cover are medicines like Xanax or Klonopin or Ativan. If you do not have other insurance, you will have to pay for these yourself. The Medicare D plans will sell them to you with no insurance benefit, but they are often cheaper elsewhere.

If you or your adviser want to use the internet to find out more about medication prices, see the attached pages about how to use the Medicare D planfinder and the page with the web addresses of several low-cost in-store and mail or internet pharmacies.

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