Went to Costco today...we picked up peanuts for our squirrel population, and I'm sure a few other things...I have no idea what the final bill came to for groceries, because I was too busy staring at our annual to date Rx costs!

$840. Ack. Ick. Mortified. Kept going through the receipts, double checking...

then I realized it's the end of APRIL, and this is YTD costs.

Came home, ran the totals for these same meds last year. 2005 YTD would have been $5500. OUCH. No wonder the savings account seemed to be slipping away. It was!

If I add in the cost of insurance, which I did not have Rx on last year, it is only at extra $45 a month, or $180 for YTD. So basically I've gone from $5500 to $1000. STILL too high IMHO, but at least I feel a bit better about it.

I still plan to blog on the changes I've made; I just quite hadn't appreciated what a change it has been. A year ago, I thought that the only real way to reduce my out of pocket Rx expenses was to stop taking the meds.

Still working on Mom's issues with Medicare. She's doing better, enough to say her doctor was putting her through H*LL (and she never talks like that!).