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Montana pharmacies survey shows power of seniors shopping

By MSU News Service

If you want consistent prescription drug prices, maybe you should invite more senior citizens to move to town.


 Pharmacies that have a lot of senior-citizen customers appear to price prescription drugs more competitively, according to Adrienne Ohler, a Montana State University graduate student who studied prescription-drug pricing in 13 Montana communities.

Ohler speculated that seniors have more time to do price-comparison shopping, more experience with multiple prescriptions and are more financially motivated to find the best deals.

So when pharmacies have many senior citizens as customers, they appear to price prescription drugs more competitively, she said. Ohler completed her master's degree in economics this spring.

"Adding this special variability of the markets is a new and important contribution to the research literature on the subject," Vince Smith, Ohler's principal adviser on the research, said.

Ohler spent two months driving through Montana during the summer of 2004 to survey pharmacies in 13 communities: Belgrade, Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Glasgow, Great Falls, Havre, Helena, Kalispell, Livingston, Missoula, Plentywood and Shelby.

While going door-to-door asking pharmacists to give her prices on 75 common prescription drugs was not always easy -- there were perks to the job.

"I got to see Glacier. That was really nice," said Ohler, who is from the relatively flatlands of Mt. Pulaski, Ill.

In addition, Ohler wanted to examine whether distance to Canada influenced Montana drug prices. Although Canadian drugs cannot be legally imported,

Canadian prices are sometimes lower there for the same drug.

Five of the surveyed communities were within 100 miles of the Canadian border, three were with about 40 miles of the border. And Ohler's data did not show any relationship between distance to Canada and prescription drug prices in Montana.

At the MSU graduation May 7, Ohler received the 2005 MSU Foundation Masters Graduate Achievement Award for her research.

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