{"id":18930,"date":"2018-02-11T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-11T15:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.accessrx.com\/blog\/?p=18930"},"modified":"2018-11-23T14:48:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T14:48:47","slug":"consider-total-cost-of-ownership-when-buying-viagra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edrugstore.com\/blog\/erectile-dysfunction\/viagra\/consider-total-cost-of-ownership-when-buying-viagra\/","title":{"rendered":"Consider Total Cost of Ownership When Buying Viagra"},"content":{"rendered":"

When purchasing medications for erectile dysfunction (ED), factor in the cost of your time when figuring your costs.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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It Could Be Weeks Yet\u00a0Before Your Appointment<\/h3>\n

One of the biggest frustrations in today\u2019s health care marketplace is the time it takes to book an appointment with a medical specialist or even your family doctor. The difficulty factor varies considerably depending on where you live and the type of doctor you need to consult.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re trying to see a urologist in Manhattan, you\u2019ll no doubt have to wait much longer than would be the case in rural Pennsylvania. But then again, you might not be able to find a qualified urologist in parts of rural Pennsylvania and thus would be forced to travel long distances.<\/p>\n

MerrittHawkins, a unit of AMN Healthcare, a healthcare staffing firm, surveyed more than 1,400 physicians to determine average wait times among five specialties: cardiology, dermatology, family medicine, obstetrics\/gynecology, and orthopedics. According to an article at Forbes.com<\/a>, the poll found the average time patients had to wait to schedule an appointment had climbed from 18.5 days in 2014 to 24 days by early 2017. The survey was conducted in 15 major U.S. metropolitan areas. Waiting times for an appointment were worst in Boston, where it took an average of 52 days to get an appointment to see a professional in any of the five medical disciplines.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll have to chalk up this sort of wait time to experience because it\u2019s virtually impossible to put any sort of price tag on it. Needless to say, however, it can be very frustrating.<\/p>\n

TABLE OF CONTENTS<\/h3>\n

Introduction (The Fred Factor)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Paying the Doctor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Getting There — and Back<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Waiting for the Doctor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Filling the Prescription<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Time Off from Work?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

So What\u2019s the Alternative?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It Comes with a Pill Splitter<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Making Comparisons<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Introduction (The Fred Factor)<\/h3>\n

There is a school of thought that maintains the true cost of a prescription medication should be based on not just the price for a bottle of pills but also on all the other expenditures that were made to make that purchase possible. These would include the fee paid for a visit to the doctor\u2019s office, wages lost to schedule such a visit, or time spent waiting at the doctor\u2019s office or in a pharmacy queue, as well as the price of the medication itself. It might seem a bit extreme, but if you take the time to analyze it closely, you might find that it at least sensitizes you to all the various expenses associated with the drugs we buy to maintain our overall health and well-being.<\/p>\n

Accurately quantifying all those expenses would be a daunting proposition, of course. Who\u2019s to say what your time is worth? Probably more than your boss thinks but surely less than the price tag you would put on it. Even if the pricing mechanism might be a bit inexact, going through the exercise opens up your eyes to the real cost of things, or, more precisely, points up the fact that everything — even time spent waiting — has its cost.<\/p>\n

For the purpose of this experiment, we will seek to calculate the total cost of a prescription for eight 50-milligram tablets of Viagra for a middle-aged gentleman named Fred. The running tab for Fred\u2019s Viagra prescription will be based on certain cost-factors that are specific to Fred but can be worked out for others using fairly simple calculations.<\/p>\n

Paying the Doctor<\/h3>\n

Because the vast majority of Americans are covered by some degree of health care insurance, the cost to visit a doctor for Fred and most others will be the co-pay required by Fred\u2019s insurer. The typical tab for a primary doctor\u2019s visit ranges from $150 to $200 and even higher for most specialists. And the typical co-pay is 20 percent of the posted cost of the visit, putting the cost to Fred somewhere between $30 and $40.<\/p>\n

Depending on the policies of Fred\u2019s doctor, a single office visit could be enough to establish a diagnosis of erectile dysfunction and get the first prescription for Viagra, one of the more popular drugs prescribed to treat ED. Once a prescription has been written, the doctor\u2019s office is usually willing to renew it upon a request from the patient unless there is some reason to believe that the patient\u2019s condition has changed. Thus, the cost for that visit could be factored into all future purchases of the drug, thus diminishing the impact of that cost factor.<\/p>\n

Getting There — and Back<\/h3>\n

Unless the doctor that Fred will be visiting lives across the street, Fred will undoubtedly have to spend a bit of time to get to and from the doctor\u2019s office. For our hypothetical, we\u2019ll suppose that Fred must travel 10 miles from his home or workplace to the doctors and a similar distance on the return trip. Using the standard mileage rate allowed by the Internal Revenue Service for 2017, that round trip of 20 miles gets a price tag of $10.70, which covers gasoline and wear and tear on the vehicle.<\/p>\n

The time it takes to drive to and from the doctor\u2019s office, as well as time spent in the doctor\u2019s office, will be calculated based on each individual\u2019s honest estimate of what his or her time is worth. Let\u2019s assume that Fred\u2019s a relatively modest fellow, who puts his hourly worth at a mere $12. Assuming the round trip to and from the doctor\u2019s office could be completed in 30 minutes, this brings transportation costs, including use of the vehicle, to a total of $16.70, adding $6 for a half hour of Fred\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

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\"Viagra\"
Sometimes you may have to wait in a line at the pharmacy to pick up your prescription.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Waiting for the Doctor<\/h3>\n

Life would be much simpler if a visit to the doctor involved no lost time thumbing through last year\u2019s magazines in the waiting room, but that\u2019s unlikely to happen anytime soon. It\u2019s probably safe to assume that Fred will spend at least another 30 minutes waiting to actually consult the doctor once he arrives at the office or is ushered into an examination room. So let\u2019s add another $6 — for Fred\u2019s personal time — to the accumulating costs of a visit to the doctor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Filling the Prescription<\/h3>\n

If Fred has successfully convinced the doctor that his symptoms of erectile dysfunction warrant treatment with Viagra, he must now see about getting that prescription filled. Many doctors today electronically transmit prescriptions to the preferred pharmacies of their patients, which in Fred\u2019s case hopefully would eliminate that added step of dropping off the prescription.<\/p>\n

However, once the prescription\u2019s been filled, Fred must make a separate trip to the pharmacy to pick up the medication. Depending on the distances involved, this will probably involve additional transportation costs and an expenditure of Fred\u2019s personal time. For argument\u2019s sake, we\u2019ll put Fred\u2019s pharmacy a 10-mile roundtrip from his home, which will entail a vehicle cost of $5.35 and personal time expenditure of $3, covering the 15 minutes it will take to drive there and back to his wife, Wilma<\/p>\n

And, if Fred must spend some time waiting in line for the pharmacist, that will add to his tab for personal time spent waiting.<\/p>\n

Time Off from Work?<\/h3>\n

Trying to sandwich a visit to the doctor\u2019s office into a regular work week schedule can be difficult and may require that Fred take time off from work to get the job done. If he takes a half day, and his hourly pay rate is only $12, that adds another $48 to the tab. For those conscientious enough to note that some of Fred\u2019s assertions of personal time expenditures are being accounted for by this $48 of wages lost, we\u2019ll concede that his $9 of personal time charges can be absorbed into this $48 figure.<\/p>\n

So What\u2019s the Alternative?<\/h3>\n

While we would strongly counsel against careless online shopping, particularly when it comes to potentially potent prescription drugs, there is a safe — and less expensive — way to buy ED drugs online. eDrugstore.com is an online facilitator that partners with Secure Medical to market a select assortment of lifestyle medications, including Viagra and other oral ED drugs. eDrugstore uses Secure Medical\u2019s proprietary processing capabilities and data centers to safely and securely conduct online transactions with prospective customers.<\/p>\n

If you already have a doctor\u2019s prescription, you can fax it or scan and email it along with your order to eDrugstore. However, if you don\u2019t yet have a prescription and would prefer to avoid the added cost of a doctor\u2019s visit, eDrugstore can set up a complimentary consultation with a member of its team of licensed U.S. physicians. eDrugstore\u2019s doctor will then review your symptoms, medical history, and a list of the prescription and OTC drugs you\u2019re taking to see if you\u2019re an appropriate candidate for Viagra or one of the other ED drugs available from eDrugstore.<\/p>\n

Once a prescription has been authorized, your order will be discreetly packaged and shipped directly to your home.<\/p>\n

It Comes with a Pill Splitter<\/h3>\n

Your first order from eDrugstore will come with a complimentary pill splitter, which allows you to take advantage of one of the more unusual pricing eccentricities in the prescription drug marketplace.<\/p>\n

Because it costs just as much to produce a 50-milligram tablet of a prescription drug as it does to manufacture one that is twice as strong, the manufacturing cost to the drugmaker is identical and his cost to wholesalers and retailers is also identical<\/p>\n

If you take Viagra and find that a 50-milligram tablet of the drug produces the desired results, you can take advantage of this pricing phenomenon by ordering 100-milligram tablets that can then be split to yield twice as many doses. eDrugstore\u2019s current price for eight 100-milligram tablets of Viagra is $684, bringing the price per 50-milligram dose to a more affordable $42.75. Of course, you can increase your savings even more if you\u2019re willing to try generic Viagra. Eight 100-milligram tablets of sildenafil citrate produced by Pfizer subsidiary Greenstone LLC cost only $352, or $22 per 50-milligram dose after splitting.<\/p>\n

Making Comparisons<\/h3>\n

Using an online facilitator such as eDrugstore, you can get a complimentary online consultation with a licensed U.S. doctor, your prescription, the Viagra itself, and even a pill splitter for far less than the total cost you\u2019d pay after getting a prescription from your doctor. That\u2019s assuming you\u2019re taking into consideration all the costs involved in getting and filling that prescription.<\/p>\n

Visiting a doctor has some advantages for patients who really need to have certain questions about their symptoms of impotence answered by a medical professional. It\u2019s also advisable for men with other serious health issues to talk directly to a doctor to learn what course of action is advisable for them. If you want to learn more, you can find a wide range of information on erectile dysfunction on our blog.<\/a><\/p>\n

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When purchasing medications for erectile dysfunction (ED), factor in the cost of your time when figuring your costs.\u00a0   It Could Be Weeks Yet\u00a0Before Your Appointment One of the biggest frustrations in today\u2019s health care marketplace is the time it takes to book an appointment with a medical specialist or even your family doctor. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_autoblog_aioseo_focus_keyphrase":"","_autoblog_aioseo_title":"","_autoblog_aioseo_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[184],"class_list":["post-18930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viagra","tag-viagra"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t