Kaiser’s system works better than a lot of others, but for me having to drive 40 minutes for a prescription is outrageous when I have 20 other pharmacies in a 15 minute radius.
If the prescriptions are just for fairly routine drugs (diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc), I've found that most of them are cheaper paying the cash price at Walmart than the insured price at Kaiser, or paying the GoodRx price at Safeway.
What I do now is have my Kaiser doctor give me an old-fashioned written prescription on paper, take it to the Kaiser pharmacy that is in the same building as the doctor's office, and ask them what my out of pocket cost will be. While they are figuring that out, I look up my non-Kaiser options in the GoodRx app on my phone. When I get the cost from the Kaiser pharmacy, I can then decide where to actually have it filled.
It was similar before I had Kaiser. The Walmart cash price or the GoodRx price was often less than my copay with Premera or LifeWise if I used insurance.
What I do now is have my Kaiser doctor give me an old-fashioned written prescription on paper, take it to the Kaiser pharmacy that is in the same building as the doctor's office, and ask them what my out of pocket cost will be. While they are figuring that out, I look up my non-Kaiser options in the GoodRx app on my phone. When I get the cost from the Kaiser pharmacy, I can then decide where to actually have it filled.
It was similar before I had Kaiser. The Walmart cash price or the GoodRx price was often less than my copay with Premera or LifeWise if I used insurance.