Would you ever considering switching a prescription to save money. If so what would be the deciding amount? Depending on the health care plan that you have you can pay a wide range for prescription drugs especially if you’re on a plan that uses a formulary. I know that not all drugs are the same but would you ever consider trying out a different drug if you knew that unlike the one that you’re on, the alternative drug is available in a generic form. Personally I’ve considered it a time or two but haven’t really followed through with it because I currently don’t pay a lot for my medicines. Right now I’m on three daily medicines, none of which have a generic alternative, and so I pay $14/month for each one. Alternatively generic drugs on our student plan cost $7/month.

Two of the prescriptions are for common medications that I know have generics in other product lines, however for prescription one the medicine I have works and so I’m afraid that if I switch it might not work as well and in the time it takes me to switch back I will feel quite ill. The second drug is an allergy medicine that I was upgraded to this past spring because even on other allergy medications I wasn’t getting a lot of relief. However I also started allergy shots this spring and so I am hoping that by next spring when I am done with the build-up phase I might be able to go back to the old drug since my symptoms should be less severe. Also, my third medication is also allergy related (I also have a few other seasonal medications that I take as well), so I have the potential for dropping it completely, at least during the off-season, if my shots work well. Even if I kept the third medication and switched to generics for the first two I would have a potential savings of $168/year. I’m just not really sure if it’s worth it. Also since my fellowship provides free health insurance through the student health center, these are basically my only medical costs with the exception of once or twice a year visits to my allergy specialist (new serum) and a $10 copay for a flu shot (which used to be free). I will say though that when I worked for the government I switched insurance companies because the first company had a hideous tiered formulary – they were charging me $45/mo for a generic allergy medication (versus the standard $15/mo) because they felt that over-the-counter Claritin was equivalent (which it was not). The difference for that prescription alone was enough to make it worth going to a different insurance company that had a higher premium but only charged $5/mo for the generic version of my allergy medication, saving me $40/mo on one prescription alone.