+Fr Robert Ballecer, SJ I have to take exception with one of your sponsors, Pill Pack Apparent...

[G+_Steve C]

+Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ I have to take exception with one of your sponsors, Pill Pack. Apparently nobody at Twit has checked into this so I did some checking and found that most everything said in the ad is false! They are one of the most expensive pharmacies out there! They won't publish their prices but I contacted them and had to email them 3 times then finally DEMAND a price and eventually got the price for ONE prescription! I also found that I can use the GoodRX app to find some prices.

Originally I asked them for the price of a 28 day supply of Tamsulosin Hydrochloride 0.4 mg and found out that it is $22.61 from them while GoodRX says it's $15.05 at Safeway!

 

Using the sample print out at the beginning of the ad I checked on some of the ones listed, Lisinopril, Metoprolol and Atorvastatin.

 

Lisinopril is $11.65 at Pill Pack but only $4.00 Walmart and Frys.

Metoprolol is $10.38 at Pill Pack but only $4.00 at Walmart, Target and Frys.

Atorvastatin is $26.01 at Pill Pack but $12.23 at Safeway.

 

Also, it was implied that Pill Pack will send you free vitamins but they aren't going to send any vitamins at all unless they are prescribed by the doctor and covered by insurance or you pay cash. Frankly I never heard of vitamins being prescribed but I'm sure they would sell you some at a high price that's a lot more they you can get them for locally.

It seems the only service they are actually offering is putting the pills on a labeled paper strip that tells when to take them and mailing them to customers at double or triple the price. Unless the customer is unable to go to the store I can't see any reason to do that however and in that case there are better prices at other mail order pharmacies .

 

While it may be true that all you would have to pay is the insurance co-pay they aren't covered by lots of insurance plans. Humana that I have don't cover them for instance but then Humana already has a low cost mail order prescription plan so there's no need for this.

I don't care if Jill Duffy loves it or not I think it's a Rip Off!

[G+_Dino D Fantozzi]

Steve, they provide the service of packaging the pills. Some people take a dozen pills broken up over 4 times over the day. This company (and many others) put these pills in baggies for you. You pay for convenience. And if you are a care giver, you pay for the security of knowing what to administer and when.

 

If you'd like to drive to Canada, you can get them even cheaper than GoodRX - go for it.

 

Not everything is about lowest cost.

 

And by the way Padre will never answer you, nor will Leo Laporte?. You'll only get TWiT listeners laughing at you for your silly comments about TWit advertisers.

[G+_Ben Reese]

I'll have to listen more closely next time, but I don't remember them saying they're the cheapest. I wouldn't expect them to be if they're individually wrapping pills. As Dino said, you pay for the convenience.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Since this is the Know How community, any ideas for a DIY pill separator with daily reminder? Bonus points if it can deliver the drugs via drone ?

[G+_610GARAGE]

I'm with Dino D Fantozzi  and Ben Reese  on this one.

 

I'm a type one diabetic. I'm on an insulin pump now, but I use to have to take a shot every night before I went to bed. You would think sticking yourself with a sharp pointy object would be memorable, but after a couple years of this, I started to get into the problem of not being able to remember if I had just taken a shot or not. Keep in mind that I was in my early teens.

 

One night, my blood sugar went down and didn't want to come back up. I suddenly thought that I had taken the shot twice. Two ambulances, a trip to the ER and a bruised ego later, I found out that I didn't.

 

To you, this service seems expensive, but to someone who has bad eyesight, memory, and is taking several critical medications, a service like this would be well worth the price. Not just with convenience, but also it could save their life by preventing a skipped medications, or worse, a double dose. Not to mention, it could be cheaper in the long run because there would be less trips to the ER.

[G+_Scott W]

Here we go again...

[G+_Jason Perry]

Ben Reese , I disagree, the drone delivers them in bulk. Then a client side counts, and sorts them to confirm they are all there. When you need to take a pill a gentle reminder goes off, then a more abrupt one if you dont listen to the first.

 

Bonus points if you can press a button and it will pack them incase you are going out for the day.

[G+_Steve C]

If you guys want to pay twice as much for prescriptions just to have them on a paper strip go ahead but I'm looking for ways to pay less since they are already plenty high.

The hot setup would be to get them a lot cheaper then use an Arduino to dispense them at the proper time, a DIY pill separator like Ben said!