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UniRush LLC Wednesday announced it anticipates providing about 1 million free prescription-drug discount cards to RushCard prepaid cardholders. More than 56,000 participating pharmacies nationwide will accept the discount card, which provides 10% to 85% discounts on the cost of generic and brand-name drugs. Cardholders can register through their online RushCard account and then print out the card. UniRush officials could not be reached to comment by CardLine's deadline. UniRush likely is using a discount card "that belongs to an existing discount network between health care providers and pharmacies to drive the discount," says Tim Sloane, director of Mercator Advisory Group's prepaid advisory service. While most merchant discounts can be integrated onto a prepaid card, these kind of medical discounts do not operate on a magnetic stripe, Sloane adds. "The pharmacy wants to see an actual discount card and make sure the customer belongs to a certain network," says Sloane. Prepaid card providers and program managers, however, are making efforts to integrate those discounts more closely to the prepaid product and even sell prescription drug discount cards as prepaid products, Sloane adds.
