May 2, 2010
Orlando Sentinel
Consumer tips
The Food and Drug Administration provides a number of consumer safety tips for buying medicines over the Internet on its Web site, http://www.fda.gov. Look under the "drugs" tab and then "consumer resources."
Consumers seeking to buy drugs online from Canada can verify that a pharmacy is a member of the Canadian pharmacy association and learn more about safety tips by visiting http://www.ciparx.ca
Consumers should ask the following questions before ordering prescription drugs from an online pharmacy:
•Is the pharmacy licensed and regulated in its home country?
•Does the pharmacy require a written, signed prescription from the patient's doctor?
•Does the pharmacy guarantee patient privacy and confidentiality of records and contact information?
•Are the medications being sold made by leading brand-name manufacturers?
•Does the pharmacy have a licensed pharmacist reviewing orders?
•Is the pharmacist accessible to patients for questions?
Other ways to save on medications:
•The Florida Discount Drug Card provides lower-cost prescriptions for Florida residents. There is no age limit, income requirement, waiting period, pre-existing-condition restrictions or membership fee. The discount card Web site provides information including a drug-pricing index and pharmacy-locator tool. For more information or to enroll, visit http://www.floridadiscountdrugcard.com or call 866-341-8894.
•Many pharmaceutical companies offer prescription-assistance programs. For example, GlaxoSmithKline programs provided medicines valued at almost $388 million to more than 484,000 patients in 2007. For more information, visit http://www.gskforyou.com/index.htm.
•The Partnership for Prescription Assistance helps qualifying patients without prescription-drug coverage get the medicines they need at low or no cost. The program offers one-stop access to more than 475 public and private programs, including nearly 200 offered by pharmaceutical companies.
For information, patients can go to program's Web site, http://www.pparx.org, or call its multilingual toll-free line, 1-888-4PPA-NOW.
Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/os-drugs-consumer-tips-20100502,0,1092408.story.html#