| By :
Wiley Long
If you're trying to save with health insurance in Tennessee that doesn't cover your prescriptions, here are tips to cut what you spend on medications. You can lower what you pay for medications with online help to find the best price at local pharmacies. Do a Google search for "Rx Wizard" and click on "Prescription Pricing" to get to a website that compares pricing in your area. You'll need to enter your zip code, the medicine and the quantity you want to buy. Prescription discounts are also available online. MediGap Advisors, for example, lets you download, print and cut out prescription discount cards that work at more than 54,000 national and regional pharmacies for savings of up to 75 percent. Fill Your Prescriptions For A Lower Price By Mail Have you heard that mail-order delivery is available for many commonly-prescribed medications? Getting prescriptions by mail-order is almost always cheaper than going to a pharmacy. You can get a 90-day supply with a volume discount and get the same amount of medication for a lot less than when you buy a month's worth at a time. Certain mail-order delivery services offer coupon savings or other discounts, such as waiving the shipping fee. Even if you don't find free shipping, here's a way to cut your cost of shipping. Ask your doctor to write your prescription for a three-month supply plus three refills. That way you can get an entire year's worth for one shipping fee. Get The Same Amount Of Your Medication For Half The Cost Certain medications cost virtually the same in all strengths. You can get double the strength of your prescription and use a pill splitter to cut the cost of your medicine by half. Pill splitting may not be appropriate for every prescription. With your doctor's approval, you can find pill splitters at most pharmacies or with an online search for "pill splitter." Just be sure you split every pill and sign a check-off sheet you keep with your medication. Have a friend, relative or other helper confirm your check-off sheet is up-to-date to ensure you never take the wrong strength. Your doctor may be able to prescribe a lower-cost generic. You don't have to worry about "you get what you pay for" here because generic drugs are required by law to have the same active compounds as brand-name drugs. That means generics have the same potency, purity and safety as name brands. It's still possible to get free or reduced pricing for certain prescriptions. See if the company that makes your medication has assistance programs, such as sliding-scale income programs. Talk to your doctor to see whether drug company reps give her free samples, and ask your pharmacist for ideas on ways to save on your specific prescriptions. How long has it been since your doctor reviewed all of the medications you are taking? Be sure to show your doctor all the over-the-counter drugs, supplements and herbs you're taking, too. You can confirm whether it's still appropriate to take them all, especially if different specialists write prescriptions for you. It's also advisable to do this once a year to be sure none of what you're taking can interaction to produce negative side effects. Tennessee Health Insurance Plans Can Be Affordable Just because you find your health insurance plan charges more than you'd like for prescription coverage doesn't mean that's going to be true for all plans. Run some online Tennessee health insurance quotes from independent websites that allow you to compare policies from different insurers. Insurance companies literally sell hundreds of different plans in your state so your chances of finding the right coverage at the lowest price is better when you compare plans from different companies.
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