I trust all is well on your side!  This message-- forwarded from a correspondent--may interest you.  I have not bought a prescription drug in more than three years; but I am a member of Costco, and I can testify that it has proved to be a good place to do business.   A "state of the art" computer I bought from Costco eight months ago "gave up the ghost" just before Easter.  Costco refunded my entire purchase price without murmur, and I promptly bought another one from them!  (Their refund policy on computers has changed recently. Now,  a computer may be returned to the store unconditionally for 6 months after purchase.  Still, that policy is about the best in the business!)  I have often found  Costco's pricing for high-quality merchandise significantly lower than that of competitors, as the message below indicates!  Regards.  X  KnoxDuncan@... 

 
----- Original Message ----- 
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2003 12:49 AM
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Prescription Drug Costs
  This following information came to me from a lady I worked with at Arizona State University, whose son is an internist and  professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
    
  Recently, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. He found  that some generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more.  That's not a typo..... three thousand percent!

  Often we blame the drug companies for the high cost of medicine, but in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies. For example, if you bought a name brand prescripton, you might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you bought the generic equivalent, the pills would only cost $80, making you think you are "saving" $20. What the pharmacist did not tell you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!

  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.  He said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for generic drugs.  I went to the Costco web site, where you can look up the online price for any drug.  (In-store prices are consistent with the online prices.) I was appalled at what I found.  To give you an example from my own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.

  Although Costco is a "membership"  store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there, prescriptions are federally regulated.  Tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.