I've been buying generic Lialda from "TotalCareMart" which was recommended by my GI, who tells me he uses them frequently himself. He has their cards and flyers in his waiting room. The prices are 1/6 or 1/7 that of Expressscript
s, and less than half the price of the drug if I went to a local pharmacy with a GoodRx coupon. I haven't had any customer service problems. However I did pay $50 for lifetime free shipping, after which they increased their prices a bit and switched dispensing pharmacies from Singapore to Mauritius. So I regret buying the lifetime free shipping.
My general practitioner office
openly recommends "RxConnected", which has similar prices and a similar business model as TotalCareMart. But I haven't used them.
PharmacyChecker is a website that purports to verify that these websites are safe and won't steal your identity. However this is still very questionable - it's just a private business doing this, they don't get into any FDA-level safety verification or . You can type in your drug and search for which website has it the cheapest. If you tweet at them asking how we can know we won't get counterfeit drugs, they'll point to some study saying these import sites have fewer instances of counterfeit drugs than normal in-country pharmacies.
I've noticed something fishy, though. There are many of these sites that appear to be exactly the same with a different name and slightly different prices. For example, compare the websites for TotalCareMart, PharmStore.com, DrugMartDirect, and PlanetDrugsDirect. They're all exactly the same website, run from the same city (Winnipeg, Manitoba) out of a different PO box and different 1-800 phone number. They dispense the same drugs manufactured in the same countries and filled by the same countries, at slightly different prices. In fact if you sign up on one such website and then try to sign up on another using the same email address, it won't let you because they all have the same user database.
Of course they're also saving me thousands of dollars out of my pocket every year so I'm reluctant to bite the hand that feeds me. But it's very curious.
And there's at least one other website format that is exactly copied between a half dozen such companies, probably doing the same thing. Why in the world do they do this? Is this all just one company trying to make it look like there's 50? Is PharmacyChecker owned by the same people as all these shell pharmacies?
Anyway, for whatever drug you're buying, check out what country it's filled from. Google what your particular manufacturer's drug is supposed to look like and check that.
My GI told me that the problem of counterfeit drugs is more of a concern for expensive drugs, and he doesn't consider Lialda/Canasa an expensive drug.
Post Edited (UCinGV) : 10/23/2019 6:48:50 AM (GMT-6)