Print this page
Email a friend
Was this information helpful?
(0 votes)What do you think? Click "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to vote!
If you have more to say, post a comment below!
Q. I am about to fall into the Medicare Part D “donut hole” and would like to buy my drugs from Canada to save money for the remainder of this year. How do I know which online pharmacy to select?
A. Many senior citizens who signed up for the prescription drug benefit from Medicare are shocked when they hit the so-called donut hole. When drug expenses come to a total of $2400, patients must pay 100 percent of their medication bill. If drug expenses eventually exceed $5,451, Part D kicks in again with catastrophic coverage until the end of the year.
If you don’t think your drug expenses will get that high, you may want to consider purchasing your medicines from Canada. (These do not qualify to get you out of the donut hole, though.) Be sure that you are shopping from a legitimate Canadian online pharmacy. Fraudulent pharmacies may be doing business from other countries without the quality control we expect from Canada.
To help you evaluate your options we are sending you our Guide to Saving Money on Medicine with guidelines for buying medicines from Canada and pros and cons of generic drugs.
When I fell into the donut hole in August of last year,
I was angry to have been tricked by Medicare and worried that I couldn't afford medications I depend on. Happily, I found ADC in
India where one of my prescriptions was filled for
$9.82/month ($135 in US) and
another for $6.75/month ($115
in US). These are listed as
generics and carry a slightly
different name from the US products but are equally effective. Thus, US Big Pharma's claim that generics
for many drugs don't exist is
false and allows for
continuation of super-inflated
prices on many US meds. I will
be happy to supply the email
address of ADC to anyone who
is nearing the donut hole.
[Editor's note: Verifying the quality of generic products from India could be tricky. We worry quite a lot about quality control. Check out our Generic Drug Problem box on the home page to read some scary stories.}
several months ago i was told by two different canadian pharmacies that they are now obtaining some medicines from India. In that way they said that they can get medicines that they could formerly not get because of legal protections of the medicine manufacturers of the U S and Canada. That somewhat makes me nervous about the quality issues. By the way, my wife has been using the Canadian equivalent of prempro for several years at a huge cost savings. A best as we can tell , it has been fine for her.
Just wanted to let you know that I have recently been ripped off by a company called canadian pharmacy online. I paid with a credit card, and they never sent their product as promised. They have a fake phone number and e-mails to them are undeliverable. To date they will still take orders online. Other than the better business bureau, I can find no way of having their web site removed or flagged.
Bud Beland