8 Ways to Get Affordable Medication (Some Might Surprise You)

It’s no secret that one of the easiest ways to afford medication is to use insurance to get it for the cost of a co-pay. And if you don’t already have insurance, there may be a way to get it. We recommend checking first to see if you can sign up for an insurance plan (or a better one than the one you already have) before you try to get prescriptions filled without insurance. Read on to learn about some of the options you may have.

America’s public insurance plans help millions of people get the healthcare they need. In fact, Medicaid and Medicare cover 43 percent of Americans. But not everyone who is eligible for one of these plans realizes it.

Medicare and Medicaid are awesome. There are doctors, therapists, and clinics that don’t accept these plans, but there are many who do. And our public plans cover things commercial insurance plans often don’t cover, including specialty mental health services. We think fewer eligible people would neglect enrolling in these plans if they knew what good coverage they provide.

So, if you think you might be eligible, you can apply at your local social services office, or you can apply online as part of your application for insurance on the Health Insurance Marketplace.

The Affordable Care Act made insurance more accessible for many people. If you’re unemployed, self-employed, or work for an employer that doesn’t provide healthcare coverage, you can go to the Health Insurance Marketplace (also known as “the exchange”), fill out some forms, and get insurance. You can sign up during open enrollment or when a qualifying life event occurs.

One of the most important things to understand about the exchange is that it’s more than just a marketplace where you can shop for insurance plans. By applying for insurance through Healthcare.gov, you’re also applying for a subsidy called a premium tax credit.

This directly and immediately lowers your premium. Depending on your income and what you qualify for, you can end up paying an extremely low premium, or even nothing at all.

And the range of incomes that qualify for tax credits on the exchange is much wider than the range of incomes that qualify for Medicaid, so chances are good you’ll at least get some help.

But even if you end up paying more for a premium than you expected, you can still end up saving money in the end. It’s often cheaper to pay “extra” for an insurance policy that covers medication than to “save” by not paying for insurance but then having to pay out of pocket for medications.

Just make sure to check whether the plan you’re signing up for covers the medication you need. Not all plans cover all medications. There are tools you can use during the online sign-up process to check whether a particular plan covers the doctors, facilities, and medications you use.

If this is your situation, you’re not alone. Insurance plans, especially plans offered on the exchange, are more limited than ever. It’s increasingly common to have a plan with no out-of-network benefits. Or you may have a deductible that’s so high you end up paying out of pocket for most of your healthcare expenses anyway.

In fact, you may be in a situation in which, despite having insurance, your high deductible means you have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in medical expenses before you even get to the point medications are prescribed to you. What do you do if you can’t even afford to go to the doctor, much less fill your prescription?

The good news is that there are people who can help. You may be eligible for co-pay relief from a charitable organization or non-profit.

Sometimes, if your insurance doesn’t cover the medication you need, you can get help from a local or national program that helps people get their medications, such as a prescription discount card or a Patient Assistance Program (PAP). 

But those options don’t work for everyone, and sometimes they can only help on a short-term basis. If your insurance isn’t working for you, it can sometimes be better to address the problem directly. Paying for bad insurance or paying extra for one medication when another would work just as well are huge wastes of money.

All you might need to do to get more affordable medications is tell your doctor, psychiatrist, or other prescribing professional that your insurance doesn’t cover what they prescribed. They may be able to prescribe a generic or an alternative medication that they think will be equally effective for you. 

(If you’re not sure whether a generic version of your medication is available, you can go to this website to check.)

You might also be able to save money, or at least plan your budget, by getting your doctor to prescribe a 90-day instead of a 30-day supply of your medication. This can work especially well if you’re switching jobs and will be without coverage for a few months.

Another trick you may be able to use is to have your doctor prescribe a higher dosage of the medication and have you cut the pills in half. Your co-pays or other costs will often be lower when medication is prescribed this way (note that not all doctors are willing to do this, though).

As far as getting a different insurance plan, most jobs are like the exchange and have an open enrollment period every year where you can make changes to your insurance coverage. If you signed up for one plan thinking you wouldn’t be getting medication, you may be able to sign up for one with better coverage now that you are.

And in some cases, you might even consider switching jobs. We wouldn’t recommend doing this if you’re happy with your job, but if you were thinking about quitting or switching to another job anyway, you might want to look into whether that potential new job has better coverage. It might help you make that final decision about whether to stay with your current employer or move on.

But if you don’t want to change your job or your insurance and you can’t change your medication—or if you have no option for getting insurance whatsoever—there are other ways you may be able to get your medication for a more affordable price.

It can feel pretty hopeless if you need expensive medication but don’t have insurance (or if your insurance plan doesn’t cover the medication you need). However, there are many options for lowering the cost of your prescriptions that can help when you don’t have insurance.

Read on to learn how some of these different options work and to find links to the different programs that provide them.

One of the easiest ways to get help with the cost of medication is to use a prescription discount card. Through partnerships with pharmacies or pharmaceutical companies, the organizations that offer these cards are able to get significant discounts for their cardholders. 

These are some of the most popular medication discounts or coupon cards:

• InsideRx Digital Savings Card
• NeedyMeds Drug Discount Card
• GoodRx Prescription Discount Card
• RxAssist Prescription Savings Card
• Patient Assistance Coupon Card
• Together Rx Access Card
• New Benefits Rx Card
• FamilyWize Prescription Discount Card
• Live Healthy (NACo) Prescription Discount Card

If you have insurance, make sure to confirm whether you can use the card with insurance or if you can only use it when you don’t have insurance. If you are uninsured, make sure you meet any other eligibility criteria.

Either way, it’s worth taking a moment to explore each organization’s full website. Many of the sites that offer these cards can also connect you with other ways to save. Some let you look up and print coupons for the specific medication you need. Many offer a price comparison tool to see if one local pharmacy offers your medication for a better price than other local pharmacies. Others provide search engines that let you look for pharmaceutical company savings programs.

Sometimes you can apply for a PAP directly, and sometimes you need to ask your doctor to apply on your behalf. Either way, with a PAP, you can get huge discounts and can sometimes even get medication for free! 

You can use any of the following search engines to see if there is a PAP for the medication you need:

• Medicine Assistance Tool
• NeedyMeds Prescription Assistance
• RxAssist Patient Assistance Program Center
• Patient Assistance Prescription Assistance Search
• Medicare.gov: Find a Pharmaceutical Assistance Program
• Medicare.gov: Find a State Pharmaceutical Assistance Program

These pages will also connect you with instructions on how to apply. Many combine multiple prescription assistance services into one streamlined search. Just note that how complicated the application process is and how strict the eligibility criteria are vary from program to program.

If you start looking into a PAP through one of these sites but feel overwhelmed by the process, you can reach out to an organization that helps people apply for PAPs. One we found in our research is RxHope. You can search for local helping organizations on NeedyMeds as well.

Sometimes, the best solution is to go to a program or clinic that is set up to help you with the costs of medical care right from the start. And there’s a wider variety of low-cost clinics than you might think, many of which are open to everyone in their communities.

So, even if you don’t meet eligibility criteria for the free clinic closest to you, or waits are long at the programs you know about, there may be another option that will be the right fit for you.

The first link above (“Find a Health Center”) will take you to a page where you can specifically search for a community health center (CHC) or federally qualified health center (FQHC). These government-funded clinics have become hubs for cutting-edge integrated care.

We wish more people knew about these great programs that are usually open to everyone in the communities where they are located. You can learn more about them and other kinds of integrated clinics by reading our article on integrated care.

In addition to FQHCs, you may also want to look into community counseling agencies or publicly-funded mental health programs, both of which offer affordable mental health care, including affordable pharmacy services. (Click here to find out more about your state’s public mental health program, including who is eligible and where to go or call to get started.)

We’re believers in online therapy at OpenCounseling—not only does it make therapy more accessible for people with busy schedules, it also often makes therapy more affordable. 

The same principle often applies to online pharmacies. You can expand your options beyond local pharmacies by looking into online pharmacies that can send your prescriptions to you via mail. This can often save you money. 

Express Scripts is a long-standing online pharmacy that often partners with health insurance companies to help people get prescriptions by mail. It may or may not be a good option for you, but it’s just one example of an industry-accepted online pharmacy.

Cerebral is another legitimate service where you can get both therapy and medication online. It might be worth checking to see if their monthly subscription fees or plans would be more affordable for you than your current method of getting mental health medication.

Note that you can also often get mail-order prescriptions from large retail pharmacies and chain or big box stores that offer pharmacy services. These include Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Target, Costco, and most of the big chain pharmacies. And sometimes, due to discounts these stores get from pharmaceutical companies, you can save money when you get your prescriptions from them.

It can feel hopeless when you can’t afford the medications you need. But there is hope. There are many ways to get help covering the costs of medications, and one just might be right for you. 

Medication can be an essential part of your recovery. Don’t let sticker shock scare you away from doing what you need to do to get well. Money is a real issue for most of us, and medication costs only seem to get higher and higher. But there are ways to save that aren’t widely advertised.

In many cases, by being savvy and advocating for yourself, you can get the medications, therapy, and other mental health care you need at a price you can afford. Your future self will thank you for making the life-changing decision to prioritize your mental health. A better life might be only a call or click away.

Note: The original version of this article was written by Jennifer Novack. This version has been updated, edited, and expanded by Stephanie Hairston.