Medication Price Comparison in Detroit

As a part of our service, we do free consultations for folks struggling to pay for their medications. Medication pricing is a hot topic in the health care field and overall health system - we've all heard about drug companies raking in huge profits on drugs that used to cost just a few dollars. 

I bring this up because real people in our community are struggling to pay for their blood pressure meds, diabetes meds, blood thinners, and other pharmaceutical products. Even worse, they are paying inflated prices through the "retail pharmacy" like CVS, Meijer Pharmacy, or Walgreens. 

We give folks free consultations at Plum Health, and a big part of this is price checking their medications. Today, I had someone in the community reach out to me to ask for a price check on a whole list of medications that they take. Here's what we found:

DRUG LIST                      PLUM HEALTH Price/pill, Price/month            Insurance price/month

Atenolol 25 mg                  $0.018/pill or                  $0.54/month                     $12.99/mo

Carbidopa/Levodopa 250/10   $0.096/pill or         $2.88/month                     $47.80/mo

Finasteride 5mg                     $0.073/pill or              $2.21/month                       $15.40/mo

Flomax 0.4 mg                          $0.11/pill or                $3.40/month                     $62.75/mo

Metformin 1000 mg                  $0.0129/pill or          $0.38/month                     $12.99/mo

Levothyroxine 50 mcg                $0.27/pill              $8.25/month                       $33.67/mo

Plavix 75 mg is                            $0.06/pill               $1.92/month                         $12.99/mo

Brilinta 90 mg is                        $5.54/pill               $166.20/month                    $999.35/mo

It's eye opening, even after doing this type of medical care for the last 8 months, to see these prices side by side. The left hand column has the drug name, the second column has the Plum Health price per pill, the third column has the Plum Health price per month, and the final column has the insurance-based price per month. 

Again, this gets at the main principle: if you use a third party payment system to purchase things in the market place, the prices become inflated. However, if you buy things directly from vendors in the market place using your own money, costs tend to be less. We are able to get these low prices because we buy medication in bulk from whole sale medication suppliers. 

If you have any questions about medication prices, please feel free to call us at 313.444.5630. We routinely save folks about 50 - 90% on their medication prices. In the example above, this is about how much this person will save. 

Have a wonderful day,

Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC