No insurance? No problem: How Katherine saves over 90% on her GERD medication with GoodRx Gold

Katherine, residing in the countryside of southwest Florida, has multiple chronic conditions, which means she needs to take, and fill, several medications on an ongoing basis. For someone with health insurance, the typical copay for each of these medications ranges from about $15 to $90, but Katherine doesn’t have health insurance. In fact, she doesn’t have any sort of assistance to help her pay for her prescription drugs. She lost her Medicaid when she moved from Washington to Florida a few years ago, and she’s currently in the process of applying for disability. Katherine says she hopes to have insurance “in a year or two.”

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Katherine’s health issues include lupus, mental health disorders and chronic pain. As you can imagine, they all affect her day-to-day life, but she reckons her gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is one of the most disruptive. She tells us that she has “severe nausea that comes on without warning, which almost always leads to vomiting up stomach acid.” She needs ondansetron to keep these symptoms under control—symptoms that can appear in the middle of the night and seriously limit her ability to function.

For doctor’s appointments, Katherine relies on a health clinic that helps people who don’t have insurance and charges on a sliding scale. She also gets most of her medication from the clinic. Unfortunately, they don’t carry her GERD medication, ondansetron, which is used primarily by chemotherapy patients as an anti-nausea drug and only recently went generic. Without insurance, it would cost Katherine a whopping $300 for a one-month supply at CVS. Another pharmacy she checked offered the medication for $400.

There was no way Katherine would be able to afford her GERD medication, but luckily, the pharmacist at CVS suggested checking GoodRx. On the GoodRx website, she found she could get her medication at a significant discount from a nearby pharmacy with GoodRx Gold (GoodRx’s premium savings program). She is now able to get the ondansetron prescription for $24 a month at Winn-Dixie, a smaller grocery store only serving southeastern states.

Though ondansetron is only one of about nine medications Katherine needs every day, the 90% in savings undoubtedly helps. “It makes such a huge difference in my life,” she says. “I am so grateful that GoodRx can help me afford it. I feel better knowing that if any of my other medications ever become unavailable at the clinic, GoodRx will be there for me.”

Despite her health issues, Katherine has a great outlook on life—when we spoke to her, she was very optimistic and happy share more. “I live with my soul sister Cay, and our two doggies Charlie and William. We are making an edible forest together, with herbs, potatoes, kale, bananas, peaches, tomatoes, habanero peppers and many other yummies.” She also paints rocks and builds models since it helps calm her anxiety and helps her find some of her creativity.