Two complicating factors - A: latency, when I’m sick, I need antibiotics now, not tomorrow afternoon. B: - It isn’t legal to mail some classes of drugs. These includes, but os not limited to, pain meds, anxiety meds, and sleep meds.
My local CVS was offering free mail delivery for the first year or so during Covid. My experiences were generally good, but I have a couple meds in the unable-to-be mailed category, so I end up having to by there every couple weeks anyway.
Many ADHD meds, too. Between two very-ADHD kids, we lose tens of hours a year to screwing around with their prescriptions, plus the paid time various professionals lose to it. Some of it’s unavoidable (if you insist on the level of safeguards they apply to these) but a ton of it’s just because the processes are terrible and nobody’s bothered to make them better. One of those hidden costs of our healthcare system.
Last few insurance plan sheets I’ve looked over have also all had higher copays (like 3x higher, iirc) for mailed drugs. Not sure why.
Yes, but the personnel who verifies ID has to be a licensed pharmacy technician. And the facility must maintain the legally required audit logs and secure storage for the drugs while they await pickup.
- Online prescriptions are very cost-effective compared to retail. Typically free next-day delivery. I don't have any hard stats, but my estimate is that at least 50% of prescriptions are filled online.
- Deliveries are typically shipped to the house's/apartment's mailbox or when chosen so or if the package doesn't fit, to the closest pickup place, typically inside a grocery store. When that happens you need to show an ID to pick it up.
- Retail drug stores, particularly in small villages have been forced to raise prices dramatically. Essentially an old-people tax. :( It's not unusual for them to have 2x prices in retail compared to online.
- There is some debate about shipping hard drugs directly to mailboxes. Some want to require those things going to a pickup-place with ID verification. That makes a lot of sense, I think.
In my experience, it's pretty easy and reasonably cheap. I've used capsule for a few years and it's fine. The downsides are: 1) it can be hard to get prescriptions same day and 2) they don't carry everything I take so I still have one prescription I have to get at a B&M pharmacy.
