Today’s health care industry is anything but simple. Whether you are a consumer, provider or insurance company, the complexity of today’s health care system has been steadily increasing. And with this increase is the rising cost of health care costs, partly attributed to the increasing cost of drug prices. Add in that more and more Americans are taking some form of a prescription drug and at a younger age, it is no wonder that pharmacy benefit plans have reduced their coverage over the last several years.

But despite this near dismal financial picture of health care and prescription medications, there are two important developments that can help to offset the rising cost of medication. The first are generic medications. Just as effective as their commercial brand counterparts, generic medications offer the same benefits but with a marked reduced price tag. As more and more pharmaceutical companies are seeing the appeal of generic medications, they in turn are either lowering their drug prices or creating a generic brand of their commercial drug.

Second are prescription medication discount cards. These hassle-free cards can be used at thousands of pharmacies across the country and can be applied to most prescription medications. One of the many benefits of these cards is that there is no limit on how many you can get and you don’t need to become a member of an organization or retailer to get them.

For more information on both of these tactics, speak with your pharmacist or medical doctor.