Amazon announced today the launch of a drug subscription program called RxPass, a Prime membership add-on which costs $5 per month. RxPass is part of Amazon pharmacy (affiliate link), and offers free unlimited medications from a select list. Medications that treat more than 80 common conditions, such as high blood pressure, anxiety, and acid reflux, are included in the RxPass subscription. Almost half of all U.S. residents take one of the medications available in this program.
You can find the full list of around 60 medications here. You can read Amazon’s press release here. See FAQs here.
You’ll get unlimited medications delivered free to your door; you just have to pay the $5 monthly fee and then unlimited medications are available to you at no cost whatsoever. You first need to be a Prime member which comes with a cost of $139/year or $14.99/month (affiliate link). See this post for a full list of deals on buying Amazon Prime membership.
Note: RxPass does restrict eligibility based on insurance and the state where medications will be shipped. People with government-funded insurance such as Medicare or Medicaid are not eligible sign up for RxPass right now. Additionally, RxPass is not currently available to send medications to California, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Amazon Pharmacy is still available in all of those states.
Our Verdict
Lots of popular medications on this list, there are even some supplements there like Vitamin B12 and Biotin. Apparently those can get prescribed by a doctor.
RxPass can be a real moneysaver for many people, especially for someone who already pays for Prime as this will only cost them $5 extra per month. This can be a deal for someone who takes even one medication from the list, and can be major savings for someone who takes multiple of these medications.
I switched to using Amazon Pharmacy a while back and have been happy with them. I’ll save some money with an RxPass subscription plan for my one monthly subscription which I found on the list. (Parenthetically, I’ve found it worthwhile to pay their prices without using insurance since, ironically, it’s about half the cost without insurance versus with insurance. The Amazon system lets me choose whether to go through insurance or buy it directly without involving insurance.)
My guess is that RxPass is a money-loser for Amazon, but will bring over new customers to Amazon Pharmacy.
