Costco has well priced prescription drugs, and I believe the Costco website has cash prices for their meds. Check the Costco website for the cash price – it’s possible that the Lunesta cost per pill breaks down to something high up there. When you think $789 divided by 90 (days) =that’s almost $1 per pill, which may be about right.

The meds they prescribed for my MS were $2700 per month.
I no longer inject them thanks to the surgery I had a month ago.It was through Walgreens Pharmacy.I am so done with that.
I would look into other ways of dealing with it-other pharmacies/doctors.
Good luck,John :)

Ica, i was thinking that 789 divided by 90 was 8.76 per pill. is your calculator frozen?

I checked Costco Pharmacy. their price for 30 Lunesta is 199.00. so, that would be 600.00 for 90. it appears that Walgreens is making almost a 200 profit.

@john65pennington: you’re right – i did that in my head and I just woke up so…...

Anyway, glad you checked Costco. I’m telling you they have the best med prices, and many don’t know that you don’t have to be a member. I am a member, but I was told if you go to door and tell them you’re here for pharmacy, you can use pharmacy (if people think they can sneak and buy something, they can’t because to do that you need member card).

Ica, no problem. I will investigate Costco and use your advice on the pharmacy use only. thanks, jp

Another alternative is to talk to the doctor and see if 1) he/she has samples of the drug or 2) if another less expensive drug would work for your mom. Drug patents last for 17 years, so it will be a while before Lunesta is available in generic form.

@john65pennington I was recently prescribed Lunesta for occasional insomnia. I believe it was going to cost around $180 for 30 so that is still less than your Walgreen’s. The pharmacist didn’t have 30 in so I just took 15 to try it. Because of the cost and the fact I’ve heard it can cause hair loss, I am sticking with some of my other remedies for now. I would complain to Walgreen’s if I were you..

@janbb has a good point. I would point this out to Walgreen’s and say WTF! Maybe they made a mistake – that is a huge price difference.

I go to Costco for prescriptions as well. The dispensing fees at different pharmacies are often wildly varied. At Costco it’s $4.11 per scrip, while at Wal-mart it’s $9.99 and I’ve seen other dispensing fees as high as $19.99. Seems like that’s the culprit here to me.

We used all her doctors samples and then some. I have sat back and evaluated this situation. She tried Ambian, but it worked in reverse. Ambian was cheaper, but not effective and addictive, so that’s out. I truly feel for her. She can sleep for 3 minutes and its like 8 hours to her. She is awake all night long. She instantly goes into realm sleep, first, instead of last. maybe, its my police job that has driven her to her sleep apnea. I hope not. In any event, I will continue to pay, what I can afford, to buy her Lunesta. This is another thing you do for love.

Since I live in Tennessee, can I take her Lunesta script to Kentucky to be filled? I ask this, since the taxes in Kentucky are 6% vs. 9.5% in Tennessee. We will be there anyway and maybe this will save me a few dollars.

@john65pennington I totally understand what you are saying but maybe you can negotiate something with Walgreen’s to get a better price.

Screw Walgreens, use Costco.

Ica, going to switch over to Costco and give it a try, after i recoup from this $789.00 legal robbery from Walgreens.

I’m confused. Sleep apnea is the inability to be able to sleep because of breathing issues. Is she stopping breathing then suddenly starting again, does she have heavy snoring? That’s sleep apnea. She may need a CPap breathing machine for that. It sounds like you’re mom has insomnia, a really bad case of it.

With all that said, I totally agree with all the others that have said go to Costco. I don’t have a membership, but I get all my meds there.

i have worked at a few places that sell drugs. to be more specific i worked for middle men. when people tell you it’s the pharmacutical companies fault that is more then 75% a lie.
i used to have to use a product called diproliene (sp?) oint.
at k-mart the price went up about $30.oo. i asked the pharmacist: ‘why?’ she said let me look. her answer was: ‘oh, we don’t makeany profit on this.
a short time later, i was at work, i saw a tube of diprolene was damaged. i asked a guy, named john, if i’d be able to buy it. ‘no, not even with a perscription.’ then he asked: ‘why’.
i turns out john knew more about this place then anyone in management. john could look up anything on anything that they had, carried, or dealt with. he asked: ‘who’s your pharmacy?’ we supplied that very k-mart.
the pharmacuitical company sold diprolene oint. (i believe i got it in 75 gm tubes) for $2.7?. we sold it to k-mart for $27.7?, who in turn sold it to me for $72.7?!
i’m sure that the pharmacist told me the truth about what she pulled up on her computer. because i doubt that she was a buyer.
as time went by john would call me over and show me various prices on certain drugs we sold. the biggest difference i ever saw was for some pill [i don’t remember what it was and i had no idea what it was for] we [the middle man] paid just under $1.00. but we sold it for over $36.oo to pharmacies, hospitals, ...
now, there is a need for profit. but this is obscene. there’s over head, storage, employees, gas, transportation, refridgeration [for some drugs], shelf life, ... but it doesn’t cover these amounts.
here’s your real answer: who’s covering up for the middle men and why? i know congress had some discussions with the pharmacuitical companies. but WHY??? did they not bring up this fact? also, this was supposed to be a very strong reason for this forced health care political maze.
the only answers i can come it with is/ are: go to the stck markets and look up the stocks for middle man drug distributers [your job is to look up these stocks yourself- i’ll give you a hint for one of them it’s named after a north american bird that is used by many sports teams as their mascot]—bot pro and college. now look at the yearly profits by these companies and their high flying stock prices.
finally- it might be interesting to see who are the people that own the bulk of these stocks. i don’t know. it may be that pharmacuitical companies own a great deal of these stocks. i’m sure that our caring congressmen and women [who care and watch out for us] own a great deal of these stocks—and don’t be fooled they are from all political walks of life. so, if you’re going to point a finger then point it at ALL of them.

ps: you can purchase shares of these stocks, too.

I had a look at http://www.healthwarehouse.com/lunesta-2mg-tablets.html and the 90 day supply is $536 with free shipping. Its the same price for the 1mg , 2mg or 3 mg pill for 90 days – so potentially if your wife is on the 1mg dosage you could buy a little pill cutting machine and save even more??.... I understand that the thing about buying from online pharmacies is to be sure that they are a member of Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (http://vipps.nabp.net/) which this company is.

$8.76 dollars a day is less than minimum wage. Or there abouts, anyway. In know some who will spend three times that on beer and cigarettes.

I have a suggestion for your next Fluther Q.

Have you used any reputable Canadian pharmacies to save
on cost? Any recommendations you’d be willing to share ?

But I’ll agree also with the previous observations about apnea. There are a variety of reasons for it and medical professionals normally deal with ameliorating the cause rather than just the symptom.

Sleeping pills only treat the symptom and do absolutely nothing to adress the cause.

If it is apnea which your wife has (rather than just insomnia) I can guarantee that it has ZERO to do with your police work. Apnea has one of a number of physical causes related to that particular persons body. Has nothing to do with a spouse’s work schedule.

You may want to consider getting an independent second opinion from another medical professional. Treating the symptom without trying to eliminate the root cause sounds pretty sketchy to me.

Some people with apnea have been helped by something as simple as a small bite plate in their mouth at night. Others by use of the machine mentioned.

Also, I always go to Costco. Always the lowest price I’ve found after calling around for price quotes. Always.

First, Lunesta is a really expensive drug—there are sleep aids that are equally effective and no more dangerous / addictive, which are literally hundreds of dollars cheaper.

For some reason, doctors feel pressured to prescribe the most expensive, newer things on the market—well, the reason is obvious: 90% of doctors take “perks” from pharmaceuticals for prescribing certain amounts of expensive drugs. Often, these drugs are more dangerous than cheaper alternatives, but greedy doctors who want paid vacations from the said pharmaceuticals don’t care about their patients’ health or pocketbooks.

You have to NOT trust your doctor, decide what you need and ask for it to be prescribed. If your doctor won’t cooperate (and you were being perfectly reasonable—after all, if you were already being prescribed a sleep aid, why could you be prescribed another, cheaper sleep aid?), get another doctor.

Also, keep in mind that you can get discount prices on your prescription drugs from online pharmacies—these pharmacies are perfectly legit and require prescriptions to dispense drugs. They often take insurance, and they charge a fraction of the cost you’d normally pay. Check it out. You don’t have to be exploited, as long as we have the information superhighway.