If your doctor works at a participating health care facility, then YES - you can get the NYCRx 340B discount.

Only community pharmacies partnering with participating health care facilities and partnering facility dispensaries provide the 340B discount.

Yes! Savings (20-70%) are greatest for people paying out of pocket for their prescriptions.

It will depend on your prescription drug coverage. Check with the pharmacist.

Savings vary by drug and range from 20% - 70%.

No, there are no members. To get the 340B discount, simply become a patient at a participating site and fill your prescriptions at the partnering community pharmacy or clinic dispensary. There is no enrollment or paperwork!

If you are a patient at a health center that partners with a local pharmacy, you will take your prescriptions to that pharmacy for refills. You cannot go to any other pharmacy.

As a participant, you'll receive useful educational materials about managing certain illnesses and making healthy lifestyle changes. You will also receive reminders to refill your prescriptions.

You may be eligible for donated drugs. NYCRx can help you figure that out. Call us. You will need to know your total family income.

Ask your doctor to prescribe generic drugs. Generics are an excellent way to save money on prescriptions, and they are as effective as brand name drugs for most conditions.

Another way to save is to shop around. Pharmacies charge very different prices for the same drugs. The New York State Attorney General's office has a site that allows you to search local drugstores for the prices they charge for many common prescriptions.

You can also look online, as many large online drugstores offer very low prices for mail order prescriptions. Here are a couple of websites to look at: Drugstore.com and Costco.com.

Prescription drug prices have been one of the fastest growing sectors of overall health care expenditures in the US. Drug expenditures rose more than 4-fold between 1990 and 2004. That rise in price is due to three main factors:

1. More Prescriptions - Nationally, the number of prescriptions purchased jumped from 2.1 billion in 1994 to 3.6 billion in 2005 - a 71% increase. The US population only grew 9% during that time.
   During the same time, the average number of retail prescriptions increased 55%.
2. Increasing Price - The current average price for a prescription in New York is $63.34, nearly $10 more than the national average. New Yorkers spent over $13 billion on prescription drugs in 2005.
3. Use of Brand Name Drugs - New York State has one of the lowest generic fill rates in the country, at 40.8%. The national average is 45.2%. Each percentage change in the generic fill rate represents many millions of potential savings. Generic versions of brand name drugs can be significantly cheaper, with an average savings of approximately 60%.