Inside Rx discount prescription plan could help you save money on diabetes medications

By Lisa Foster-McNulty, MSN, RN, CDE

Save up to 80% of certain insulins and diabetes medications!

Express Scripts has developed a direct discount prescription program called Inside Rx.  They have partnered with GoodRx to offer a markdown of 16% to almost 80% on certain branded insulins and diabetes medications.  Almost 40,000 pharmacies throughout the US (although not Tennessee) and Puerto Rico will participate in the program.

Inside Rx is directed towards people who do not have insurance or who have hefty out-of-pocket costs with their health insurance, such as those with high deductible plans.  The average discount is 34% on medications from four large pharmaceutical  companies:  Novo Nordisk, Lilly/BI, Sanofi, and Astra Zenica.  The discounts are generally 40-50% price reductions for insulin, while pills are usually around 20-30% off the usual price.  Unfortunately, GLP-1 agonists like Victoza, Bydureon, Trulicity, and Lyxumia are not part of this program.

How to qualify for prescription discounts:

To benefit from Inside Rx discounts, you need to have a valid prescription for a diabetes medication that is part of the Inside Rx program.  Hopefully this program will soon be available to Tennessee residents.  You also have to be under the age of 65 to qualify.  People who have federal or state benefit plans (think Medicare and Medicaid, as well as Tricare) are ineligible. 

It is not possible to combine Inside Rx discounts with insurance or co-pay assistance programs.  Bear in mind, having insurance or being eligible for a co-pay assistance program doesn’t make you ineligible to use Inside Rx.  Rather, you may have to decide whether you want to use insurance or an assistance program to aid in payment for medication–and you may have a co-pay–or whether you are better off using the Inside Rx discount, paying out of pocket for the discounted price.  Usually if you have insurance or an assistance program, that will be the more cost-effective option.  But you would have to do the math and see which way is most advantageous for you.  If you have a Flexible Spending Account (FSA), you might be able to use it with an Inside Rx discount, but you would have to investigate the terms of your FSA to learn whether or not this would work.

In order to use Inside Rx, eligible persons who have a valid prescription for a diabetes medication would check the Inside Rx website at https://insiderx.com/#IncludedBrandMedications to learn if their medication is available at a discount.  They would then download or print out an Inside Rx card by going to https://insiderx.com/, and bring it to the pharmacy.  A pharmacist will locate the Inside Rx price, and you would pay the discounted price. 

Anything that can help to make insulin and other diabetes medications more affordable is a step in the right direction in our book!