BristolUK

People here (BE) have said you don't but that entering the store you may be asked and they've said it's not a problem just to say you're there for prescriptions.

Anyone know if they have an on line or phone refill capability?

plasticcanuck

No.

scilly

Depends on how good your private scheme is ..... usually called Extended Healthcare here, as everyone if supposed to be contributing to the Provincial medicare programme.

There may well be a deductible to the Extended Health .......... ours is $1,000 before they will cover anything.

scrubbedexpat091

I used to try to find the cheapest pharmacy dispensing fee wise to save the govt money but now I just go the closest one to me.

Crazy how much dispensing fees can be. Sometimes more then the med.

I had a generic med once which was only 1.80 but the dispensing fee was 13 and some change.

But we have coverage for the dispensing fee but always interesting to see the costs of meds and dispensing fees on the receipt.

evets

OK ta, will double check with a colleague at work as believe from memory he may use this.

BristolUK

Yep...it's not worth the hassle. The gov doesn't seem to care about wasting enormous sums - and, boy, do they ever waste - it's barely worth the $ here and there going out of your way.

bats

No membership needed and yes they do have phone refill capability.

You can also negotiate the price of meds at a pharmacy. Our cat needed cyclosporine which is pricey and Costco was the cheapest by a long way but it's also 45km away so that's time and money to get there. The village pharmacist brought their price down to close to Costco's price which made it worthwhile to get there.

fourspoon

This was an interesting read. I'm having the same debate myself. We've been here 6 months and after trying a couple of different ones, we have found a walk-in clinic that we really like. The Dr is a really nice British expat, we see the same guy everytime, we never have to wait long to get seen, but everyone assumes we will register with a family doctor at some point.

But all I'm seeing is that hardly any family doctors in my area are taking new patients, so I'm going to be going further away, having far less convenient opening hours and a complete pot luck as to whether the Dr is any good or not...I'm struggling to see what the benefit is.