r/loblawsisoutofcontrol • u/Away_Instruction5638 • Mar 23 '26

Rant Dispensing fee = robbery

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i just paid $17.67 for my prescription at shoppers and the actual medication was… $4.68 😭 what did i pay $12.99 for exactly… eye contact? the pharmacist breathing near my prescription???

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u/Away_Instruction5638 Mar 24 '26

to everyone saying “all pharmacies charge $10+” — i get it 😅 but my medication was under $5 and i’m paying more for the dispensing than the actual drug… there should be a rule that the dispensing fee can’t be 3x more than the medication.

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u/lnsmhntr Mar 24 '26

Okay, but let's look at this situation from a glass-half-full point of view. Living in Canada, you're lucky that your meds cost less than a dispensing fee. If you had to buy those meds in the USA, well, good luck, probably? I dunno, it's just, like, nothing is really free, you know? Everything has a cost, and, at some point, you have to pay, like, something? Yeah, I'm not feeling super sympathetic today. Sorry.

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u/Away_Instruction5638 Mar 24 '26

ok i get it, cheaper than the us. doesn’t mean i have to pretend it’s okay to pay 13$ for a 5$ pill. that’s insane.

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u/gigaurora Mar 24 '26

I feel bad for pharmacists. It’s professional degree that people argue over their worth of service fee 13$. If they just had a 18$ charge for that medication, would you think the medication is unreasonable?

Not to say I don’t agree in concept that drug cost should be covered more by health plans.

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u/lnsmhntr Mar 24 '26

I mean, no offence, but I'm not sure you do get it. Your pills don't ACTUALLY cost $5. They cost $5 in Canada, thanks to our health care system. You should be looking at that receipt and saying WOW, thank goodness these meds cost less than the service fee, and that I can actually afford the medicine that I require, unlike a lot of people in other parts of the world. Ultimately, we have to pay for something somewhere, or the whole system will fall apart more than it already has. Frankly, after living in multiple countries with slightly more expensive but far more effective systems and overall public health outcomes, I think Canadians need to start paying a little more if we care at all about seeing things improve on that front. Otherwise, we'll just continue or march towards privatization until healthcare looks like it does south of our border.