In response to the rising cost of medicine, discount medicine stores are growing in popularity both with traditional “brick and mortar” discount medicine stores and on the Internet. Medicine price is cited as the main reason consumers switch to discount medicine stores. Discount medicine stores are able to offer medicines at less than retail cost by either buying in volume which leads to discounts from the manufacturer and/or buying directly from the manufacturer rather than from the wholesaler. When ordering via the Internet, buying discount medicine also eliminates the wholesaler as well as the retail level, which means lower medicine cost. Often, as in the case of buying medicines via the Internet from Canada, the lower costs are due to the fact that medicines typically cost less than half of what they cost in the United States. Discount Drugs of Canada has opened several stores in the United States in the past four years. The stores do not stock or import medicines for which people have prescriptions. Rather, they take orders from customers and fax them to a Canadian pharmacy, which fills the orders and ships the medicines to the customers directly. Similarly, Medical Discounts International (MDI) customers can order through MDI who then fill prescriptions with a Canadian medicine source.

One of the oldest discount medicine stores in the United States is Discount Drug Mart, which opened their first store in Ohio in 1969. Discount Drug Mart has two subsidiaries, Immediate Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., which handles mail order prescriptions, and IPS Network, which contracts with employers to provide prescriptions covered by insurance for their employees. The Parm Deep Discount Drug Stores is a twenty-one-store chain that operates in Ohio and Michigan and offers discounts on medicines and offers online prescription medicine service. WalMart, being the largest retailer, offers medicines at a discount price by taking advantage of volume medicine buying and eliminating buying from a wholesaler. WalMart offers online prescription medicine buying services such as prescription refills, order history, medical expense summary, refill reminders and a pharmacy profile for customers.