How To Save On Prescription Medicine

After a trip to the doctor, you may find your head spinning not because of your illness, but because of the prohibitive price of your prescription medicines. This is a big problem since you can't skip these medicines due to your concern for your health. However, there is a way for you to save on your medicine expenses.

Here are a few tips to help you lessen the burden of having to pay too much for prescription medicine.

1. Go for generic. Most likely, your doctor may have given you a specific brand name of medicine to purchase. You could, however, go for generic brands of the same medicine type. Generic brands tend to be cheaper than branded medicines.

You may be concerned that generic medicines might not be as effective as branded ones. But the truth is, sometimes generic medicines perform even better than branded ones.

The best way to go about this without having to expose yourself to the risk of buying inferior medicines is to ask your doctor if there are any genetic variants of the medicine he has prescribed to you.

Most doctors have a list of alternative brands for you to try. They aren't limited to just one single brand. In fact, these pharmaceutical companies all jockey for the doctor's attention. They will lavish the doctors with different gifts because they know that their race for a doctor’s favor is neck-and-neck.

However doctors are usually sensitive to their patients needs and will give them a cheaper alternative when the need arises.

2. Follow the prescription schedule to a tee. Some people try to save money by skipping a dosage of their prescription medicine. However, this actually causes them to spend more. If you don't follow your doctor's orders properly, you could find yourself getting sick again and having to pay more for continued medication.

In the case of antibiotics, if you skip your medications, you could find your infection getting worse. Remember that antibiotics are a regimen, and if you don't complete your regimen, the medication doesn't work.

If you have to go back to your doctor he will then give you a more potent antibiotic since the bacteria you were trying to contain may have gained resistance to your previous antibiotic.

The truth is, antibiotics are becoming harder and harder to use simply because people don't complete their antibiotic regimen. And bacteria are steadily gaining resistance to even the most powerful antibiotics. So when your doctor gives you an antibiotic regimen, do follow it to a tee.