Although not directly related to non-blood treatment, I thought this was worth sharing here. Please note: I received this third-party and is unverified.

Subject: : Buying Drugs at Costco

It pays to shop around. This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put an xxxx pharmacie on every corner!

Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, everyone should know about this. Please read the following and pass it on. On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation, that even generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Yes, that's not a typo..... three thousand percent! So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are "saving" $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!

So what to do????

At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs. I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get it's online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. Just to give you one example, Compazine, which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients. The generic equivalent cost $54.99 for 60 pills at xxxx pharmacie where as the price at Costco was $19.89 for100 pills. Generic pain pills were 145 pills @ $72.57 at xxxx pharmacie compared to Costco,150 @ $28.08.

It is good to mention, that although Costco is a "membership" type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there, as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.