How Much Can You Save With Walgreens Prescription Savings Club?

I am always looking for ways to save money on necessary household items so we can spend more money on fun things. (Aren’t we all!) Among the many necessary things are unexciting things like health insurance and prescription medications. I mean really, where’s the fun in spending your hard-earned money on health insurance – blah! But well, ya gotta do it.

Something most people probably don’t know about me is that PK (pre-kids) I worked in human resources, which means I actually understand all of the gobbledegook that is health insurance. So when my husband started his new job a couple of months ago, I sat down to choose the best insurance plan for our family. Having been self employed for the last few years, we didn’t have many options in the past. Now there were lots of options. I finally settled on a high-deductible plan with a HSA. It’s a great plan with many benefits, but the downside is that it leaves my family with 100% out-of-pocket expenses on the little things. (The insurance won’t kick in unless something big happens.)

When my husband first picked up his prescription under our new plan it jumped from $8 under the old plan to $17 under the new plan. That $9 a month is an extra $108 a year I’d love to cut. I decided to check out the Walgreens Prescription Savings Club. I had seen the signs on my regular trips to Walgreens, but I never really explored it. I am so glad that I checked it out, we are going to save – big time!

Since I like research, the first thing I did was visit Walgreens.com to read everything about the Walgreens Prescription Savings Club. There’s a lot of information, but let me boil down the important parts:

• Insurance or no insurance you can use this plan to save money.
• Cost $20 for an individual or $35 for a family.
• Pets included. Did you know some pet meds have a human equivalent?
• Save 10% on Walgreens brand products in-store.
• Get a 30-day or 90-day supply in-store.

While I was on Walgreens.com I learned that Walgreens is currently offering a $25 gift card with any transferred subscription. Score!

Since I wanted to talk to a pharmacist about how the club would work for me, I headed off to Walgreens on the wettest weekend with my husband’s bottle in hand. I wanted to know more about how the plan would work with my insurance. My pharmacist explained that when you have the Savings Club medications are run through the Club, not through your insurance. (See my whole shopping trip in my Google + story here.)

For us this means medications we pick up through the Club will not automatically go toward our deductible, although I can manually submit them. Since every dollar toward the deductible helps, I will figure out how to do that (tomorrow’s homework). The good news is that I can use my HSA (Health Savings Plan) card to pay for my medications just like normal. (If you don’t know what a HSA is, you probably don’t have one it is a savings plan tied to some high-deductible insurance plans like mine.)

This was all great news for us since we are responsible for the entire cost of  our medications, but how much would the new cost be? That was the real question.

Remember I said my husband’s medication now costs $17 a month. With the Walgreens Prescription Savings Club the new cost is… $9.99. Not bad. But here’s were things got really interesting. The pharmacist asked if I was interested in a 90-day supply (which I thought you could only get by mail, but I was wrong). I asked how much that would cost and was shocked to learn that it is only $22.

Hello! That’s a savings of $116 a year! Even when you factor in the cost of the plan, $20 for an individual, that’s still an annual savings of $96. When you factor in the $25 gift card I got for transferring my prescription it’s back up to a $121 savings for the year.

For the extra $15, I elected a family plan, and as soon as allergy season hits for me in the fall will be moving my prescriptions to Walgreens!

Learn more about how much money you can save with the Walgreens Prescription Savings Club online or ask your local pharmacist. You can also follow Walgreens on Twitter and Facebook for current coupons and promotions throughout the store.

Disclosure – I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Walgreens, however, all thoughts and opinions are my own. #CBias #SocialFabric #rxsavingsclub