With the Northwestern Medical Group Pharmacy slated to close on Dec. 15, some students expressed annoyance at the anticipated inconvenience, especially given the potential price differences between the NMG Pharmacy and local alternatives.
The NMG Pharmacy, housed in Northwestern Medicine Student Health Service, provides both prescription and over-the-counter medication to students. Students were informed of the closure in a Nov. 21 email from the University to the entire student body. In the email, NU stated that the “availability of convenient options near campus that maintain evening and weekend hours,” combined with data on student usage, drove the decision to close the pharmacy.
“I’ll walk 15 minutes out of my way, but it’ll just add onto the stress,” sixth-year interdisciplinary biological sciences Ph.D. candidate Citlayi Villaseñor said. “It’s not super convenient anymore.”
In addition to worries about increased distance, other students expressed uncertainty over how the switch would affect the prices of their prescriptions.
The NMG Pharmacy states on its website that prescriptions are “frequently below the cost charged at local retail pharmacies when not using insurance.” No specific statistics concerning how much cheaper prescriptions might be are provided on the website.
“Even if it’s just a few dollars, if you’re a college student you probably don’t have a lot of disposable income,” Medill sophomore and Daily opinion contributor James Frazier-Wilson said. “It’s a little bit frustrating, especially once you get into a certain routine and a budget, to have to mess around and reallocate that.”
The pharmacy sells several over-the-counter products at prices cheaper than those listed on the CVS website. For example, the NMG Pharmacy sells CeraVe Hydrating Facial Cleanser, ThermaCare menstrual heat wraps and Refresh Contact Lens Comfort Drops each for around $4 under the prices listed by CVS.
McCormick junior Emma Hermesmeyer said when she arrived at NU, one of her prescriptions cost significantly less than it did at home, and the NMG Pharmacy’s price remained consistent for two years.
“I remember picking up my medication before I came here, and it was roughly 80 bucks, and then I came here, picked it up for the first time, and it was somewhere around 35 to 40,” Hermesmeyer said.
A University spokesperson said prescription costs for students on insurance are determined by their providers, not by the NMG Pharmacy, and that all students are required to maintain health insurance.
In the past, the NMG Pharmacy has sometimes offered discounts on prescriptions not billed to insurance.
“In situations where a student chooses not to use their insurance for a particular prescription, similar discount programs are widely available at local retail pharmacies and can help reduce costs,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson reiterated that all students using NMG Pharmacy should transfer their prescription records by contacting their preferred alternative pharmacy before Dec. 12 and talking with their clinician.
Both Frazier-Wilson and Villaseñor said they appreciate their positive interactions with the NMG Pharmacy staff. Frazier-Wilson said he enjoys the rapport he has with the workers at the front desk, whereas “at CVS, sometimes the employees aren’t tremendously friendly.”
Despite the predicted inconvenience of having to go off campus to get prescriptions filled, most students said they didn’t see the closure as much more than a minor annoyance.
“It’s not horrible, I’m sure I’ll be able to do it,” Frazier-Wilson said. “I don’t think they intended to screw us over with this. It’ll be fine in the end, it’s just a little bit of a nuisance.”
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