What boomers need to know about prescription drugs: How to buy prescription drugs

How can you get the best prescription drugs for your health and avoid mistakes that could be costly to your health and finances?

Here are some tips:

• Beware of prescription drugs advertised to consumers. These drugs are often new, brand name drugs that are expensive.

• Be sure you understand what a new prescription is for when you health care provider recommends it. Ask him or her for detailed information on what the side effects are. Be firm about this. Some doctors don’t tell patients about side effects because the patients won’t take the medication.

• Ask your health care provider to prescribe a generic prescription drug rather than a brand name. Generics can save you a lot of money. Generics are available after the patent has expired on brand name drug.

• Ask your pharmacist or health care provider if another drug would have the same therapeutic effect as a more expensive drug that’s been prescribed for you.

• Compare prices by calling pharmacies. Write down the prices you’re quoted by each pharmacy.

• Ask the pharmacist for the prescription drug label, the long thin piece of paper with tiny writing, and read it before you pay for a new medication. It used to be called the patient package insert. Look under Dosage and Administration, Indications, and Contraindications and Drug Interactions. You need to read this because the summary of the medication most pharmacies give out don’t contain all the available information about the drug.

• Check that the medications you receive are what the doctor prescribed, or confer directly with the pharmacist if it's a new prescription. Retailers in the highly competitive pharmaceutical business may be pushing their pharmacists too hard, putting the public at risk of injury from misfilled orders, according to an article in USA Today. The newspaper’s investigation found that these mistakes often are the result of corporate policies that require pharmacists to dispense prescriptions fast, in as little as two minutes.

AARP offers these additional tips when working with your pharmacist:

• Keep a list of the medicines you take and share it with your pharmacist. This will help prevent drug interactions or interactions with supplement.

• Make sure that any new drug your health care provider prescribes isn’t on a list of drugs that older people should never take.

• Ensure that the prescribed drug is not recalled or under investigation. (My post tomorrow will cover this.)

• Give your medications an annual "check-up" by taking them to your pharmacist for review, if you take more than one drug or supplement.

Public Citizen offers these suggestions for saving money on medications at www.worstpills.org.

• Ask your health care provider to help you try a nondrug treatment first, if appropriate for your condition.

• Avoid Do Not Use drugs. (More on this tomorrow.)

• Avoid Do Not Use Until Seven Years After Release drugs, unless it’s one of the rare “breakthrough” drugs.

Resources include:

• AARP -- Know Your Rx Options.

• AARP -- Medicines and You.

• Consumer Reports -- Best Buy Drugs.

• The People’s Pharmacy -- The People's Pharmacy Newsletter.

• The People’s Pharmacy -– "Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy" by Joe and Terry Graedon.

• The People’s Pharmacy -– "Drugs and Older People" by Joe and Terry Graedon.

Tomorrow's post on The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide will address What Boomers Need to Know About Prescription Drugs: How to Avoid Ineffective and Dangerous Drugs.