Tamoxifen Prices - Costco price 1/3 the CVS price!

[RachelEsther]

I first got my tamoxifen (20 mg) at CVS for $50 for 30 pills. I shopped around and then got 90 pills for $47 at Costco. The pharmacist said that the pricing at Costco must be a mistake.

Is it possible that the Costco pills are not authentic? They look different from the CVS pills, but is that a problem? Can they vary in look? Should I just chalk it up to price gauging by CVS? Or should I have the cheaper pills checked out, and if so, how and where?

Dr. Leo, any ideas?

[Muttsmom]

Hi,
Tamoxefin is the generic name so I would assume more then one company could make it, meaning it could look different. When I took Tamoxefin 2 years ago, I paid either $101.00 or $110.00 for 30 pills, so that is a huge difference, more so knowing the cost I'm sure has gone up since I took it. Call and ask them what Arimidex costs for 30 pills. I pay $213.00 for 30 pills. I don't think they could possibly sell something that wasn't what they say but again, I would be curious like you. I can see a $5.00 difference or maybe even $10.00 with something expensive, but that is a HUGE difference. I don't use CVS, so I don't know what they would get for the Arimidex.
Curious to find out, that's for sure
Nancy

[leo]

Rachel,

I wouldn't think that a drug coming from a well-known pharmacy chain could not be authentic. Tamoxifen has been available as a generic product since 2003. Nolvadex from AstraZeneca was the first, branded one, but there are other generic options now. The drug should be exactly the same.

best regards,
Leo

[RachelEsther]

Thank you Dr. Leo and Muttsmom. I didn't realized that Tamoxifen is the generic, but I also got the generic from CVS. I guess I'll ve going to Costco for prescriptions from now on!

Muttsmom, I checked the Arimidex, it's $230 at Costco. No generics, I guess.

Thanks for making me feel better about the authenticity of the drug I got! I'll be going back to Costco.

[Marion]

Hi, Rachel. My husband who is a pharmacist at Walgreens says the difference between Costco and CVS is probably just due to difference in cost and how they choose to price the drug. There are a few manufacturers of the generic and each has a different look so that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Pharmacy prices just vary from one company to another. Shopping around is probably a good idea.

Marion

[RachelEsther]

Thanks, Marion!

[Kristen]

Hi,
I am just wondering why this med is costing you so much money. Doesn't your health insurance pay for some of it.
I guess I feel very fortunate about the cost of my tamox. I use to have it filled in the local pharmacy for $10 for 30 pills, but my insurance company now uses a mail in called Express Scrips and I get three month at a time for the same price of $10. This has been a great service because you don't have to refill it every month. Also I have a daughter (10) who is a diabetic and I can get all her supplies this way too, which saves me a huge amount of money.
Just a thought, you may want to check it out. The only thing you need to do is get a 90 day script made out instead of a 30 day, which most doc's will do without a problem.
I have no idea how much the Arimidrex would cost through this program but I am going to get it out.
Take care.
Kristen

[RachelEsther]

Hi, Kristen!

I am self employed, and the health insurance available to me is really limited. I have the best one I could get. Yet, the maximum they will pay in prescriptions PER YEAR is $500. This came as a great shock to me, because before cancer, I never even approached the maximum and didn't realized that there was one. There aren't any options to up that number by paying more, I checked. And they do not have that 3 month by mail thing either.

This has really been a hardship. During chemo, I took Emend, which cost me $282 each treatment, luckily, the doc gave me samples for the other anti nausea drugs. And I had to go to a facility every day to get my neupogen shots - if I had gotten them from the pharmacy and self injected (which is what everyone else does!), they would have called it a prescription drug and not paid. So, as you can imagine, drugs have cost me thousands in the past year.

I am looking for a supplemental prescription program or a supplemental drug program that can give me more coverage. I doubt I will find one, especially now after my diagnosis.

[Kristen]

Hi Rachel,

I certainly understand where you are coming from. I too am self employed. MY husband and I have had a business for 15 years and are paying through the nose for health insurance. I thank god that I got this health insurance before the cancer came. My health insurance is HMBO Blue Cross Blue Shield in Mass. It has been a really good insurance (espescially now) with the express scripts. I will tell you though, that it cost us $1300 a month for health insurance. It seems that we are in business just to pay for all the insurance junk (workers comp, liability, health, etc.....) we are broke just paying for insurances.
Kristen

[Minnlady13]

Oh, my goodness, Kristen. You are paying $1,300 a month for medical insurance for two of you??? Have you shopped around? I would think you could do better than that, but I know that insurance rates have really gone up. You have my sympathies in having to pay that much. Lauri

[penelopez]

Lauri,

Unfortunately, shopping around doesn't do a whole lot of good these days. The state of health care is a MESS.

When DH's company closed last April we were informed via certified mail that the COBRA insurance would cost us $1400 per month, just for the three of us. That's what the company had been paying for us per month, believe it or not. And it was very restrictive. We needed referrals for everything and were not covered for some things we had been covered for in the past. I could not even get the colonoscopy the doctor said I should have after I finished treatments. Shopping for an individual policy is useless because they charge a fortune (you just had cancer treatments) and still want to exclude cancer coverage. I guess the insurance companies don't believe we are "cured." Folks don't understand just how expensive insurance is until they start looking. It's very scary to finish cancer treatments and be without insurance. Unfortunately, lots of folks fall "between the cracks." When you are looking for that safety net it is nowhere to be found.

Hugs,

Margie

[Kristen]

There is no shopping around for insurance around here. I am glad that I have such a good health insurance. The whole insurance industry is a mess and I don't want to risk losing what I have.
Yes it is extremely expensive, but when you think of what I have gone through and what the insurance has paid, I guess I have made out on the deal. Chemo cost thousands and thousands...never mind the 3 surgies just with this cancer alone.
Also it is a family plan and I have two children ages 10 years old and it pretty much pays for everything except a co-pay of $5 per office visit.
It would be interesting hearing from people that are from Canada and England..don't they have a different health care system???
Kristen

[dizzybuff38]

Hi Kristen - I live in Plymouth, England and have had Crohn's disease for 34 yrs, and had bc in 2003 - now just on Arimidex.
We have "socialised medicine", free at the point of delivery, but for those people in work, contributions have to be made to the govmt by the employee and employer. I don't know what the contrbs are now as I have been retired for 20 years, but when I worked it was 7% of gross salary for employees and 11% of salary for employers. So although we think of the National Health Service as free, it is not really, as we contribute during our working lives.

Prescriptions are free for children at school up to, I think, 18 yrs of age, and for pregnant mothers. Otherwise, unless one has an exempt disease like diabetes, there is a single prescription charge (which goes up annually) of £6.75 per item, which is about $11.

However, one can purchase a 6 monthly or annual "pre-paid prescription certificate" which I used to do, for about $250 a year and all my medicines were then 'free'. I take 5 different drugs just for my Crohn's alone, and if I had to pay for the true cost of them, and frequent hospital visits, we would be bankrupt!

Prescriptions are also free when women reach 60 yrs, which I have just done thankfully - the only benefit of getting older - and for men when they reach 65 yrs of age.
When I was having chemo last year I found out that as long as the drugs were collected from the hospital pharmacy, they were free for cancer patients, regardless of age. I don't know about other serious diseases such as heart, kidney or liver.

The downside of our NHS is that we are not normally free to choose either the specialist doctor (called a Consultant here as opposed to a General Practitioner, where we have limited choice locally) or the hospital where we will be treated. This is the prerogative of the GP. When I had trouble with my Gastro I asked my GP to transfer me to another Consultant at the same hospital (only one for about 60 miles) and he readily did this.
In serious, life threatening cases, where either specialised knowledge or facilities are required, consultants can choose to transfer patients to large teaching hospitals, usually in London or major cities, but this is at their discretion, and can only be done by a referral from the Consultant one is being treated by. We do not have freedom of choice in any shape or form.

I have a male friend of 76 yrs who lives in Tampa, Florida, who was diagnosed with non-small lung cancer 3 yrs ago, had his right lung resected but did not get better. His incredible wife did some research and found a specialist cancer hospital, The Moffitt in Tampa, changed their insurance and he was treated there - the cancer had metastasied to his left kidney and adrenal gland, which also resected. He is now doing absolutely fine, looks like a 50 yr old, but his treatment cost well over $1m and he saw 45 different doctors! Without comprehensive insurance he would not be alive today. Even after 3 yrs he still gets 3 monthly consults and 6 monthly PET scans to make sure the cancer has not come back. Here, with bc I get an annual 5 minute check and mammo - and I had to fight for that- dr's here (or at least mine) are of the opinion that annual mammos can cause cancer by too much rx and they normally only do 2 yrly mammos at the hospital I attend. As my tumour (2 cm) was not palpable, I was very concerned that if I went 2 yrs for a mammo, if I got a recurrence it would not be found until the tumour was large. My bc had spread to my lymph nodes and I often wonder if I had had annual mammos as they do in the US, whether it could have been caught earlier.We only get free mammos on turning 50.

Sorry for the long winded reply, but you did ask what the situation was like in the UK - I have friends in Canada who have or had cancer, and it seems their national health service is very similar to ours.

We do have private medical insurance available, but it is very costly and excludes all pre-existing diseases. For myself and husband (60yrs and 76 respectively) it would be prohibitive at around $14,000 pa.
Hope this is enlightening. Liz.

[Minnlady13]

Margie, I know the nightmare of COBRA insurance, but my goodness the rates have gone through the roof. When DH was layed off in 1992, we had to take COBRA and paid $500 a month. That is a vertible bargain compared to what you are paying! If you ask me, anyone who is paying COBRA rates should be talking to their congressman/woman about reforming the medical insurance industry. Of course, there are some of them who would say that we are fortunate there is anything available. After all, to paraphrase our "wonderful" Secretary of Def. "You don't get sick with the insurance you wish you had..." Lauri

[Kristen]

Hi Lauri,
Well the $1300 is for a family plan, I have two children as well (twins 10 yrs). Also, don't forget I am self employeed, therefore don't have a company that picks up a percentage of it.
Believe me I have shopped around, all the good plans pretty much run the same price here. I know its expensive and I am fortunate right now that I can afford it, but it is a really good plan. I only have $5 co-pays, but don't even have that for follow-up visits.
I have had a broken foot since August and have had many x-rays and appts and only had one co-pay of $5 on the first visit. Now they want to do an MRI on my foot. That and the cancer I actually think I am making out on the deal..lol I could never get on a new plan now with a history of cancer....has anybody else switched medical insurance?
Kristen