Medicare cards: no match for online prices.(Upfront: news trends advice)(Brief Article)

The Medicare-approved drug discount cards introduced on June 1 promise lower prices on prescription medications. But you can get a better deal by shopping online.

We compared the cost of five prescription drugs (which were among the top sellers last year) in five cities--Chicago. Detroit Minneapolis, New York, and San Bernardino, Calif.--on one day in mid-May. We checked prices from all the discount-card programs in each cry and at the Costco.com and Drugstore.com Web sites. San Bernardino had seven cards available: the other locations, about three dozen each.

As the table below shows, discount cards often had much higher prices, Except for the price paid for Prevacid, the Medicare cards' average prices were invariably higher than those of the Web sites. Even the lowest discount-card prices we found were usually only $1 to $3 better for 30 tablets than those at the online outlets, The online sellers do have modest shipping ...