单选题 Charles Paul and his wife, Hazel, stopped using the motor home they bought several years ago; it sits idle behind their house in Richardson, Texas. Travel is just one sacrifice they made to pay for the cost of their prescriptions, more than a dozen medications for the two of them. They found relief by switching drugstores, to one in nearby McKinney. A prescription for Paul" s diabetes had cost $ 89. 88 when he got it from a national chain but dropped down to $ 58 from McKinney" s Smith Drug. Smith, which claims to be the oldest drugstore in Texas, has been getting a lot of attention since a Dallas newspaper touted its astoundingly low prices. The overwhelming response from the public has been " a little scary," says co-owner Kaylei Mosier. She says the store simply marks each prescription up enough to cover its costs, but for many prescriptions that" s a lot lower than at other stores. The Smith Drug story has highlighted a little-known fact: prescription prices vary from city to city and block to block, and a little research can save consumers hundreds or thousands of dollars. Insurance copays can make these differences invisible, but they" re a huge deal to the 45 million uninsured Americans. Why the price swings? Howard Schiff, executive director of the Maryland Pharmacists Association , explains that pharmacies generally buy their drugs from a wholesaler, who doesn" t sell to every drugstore at the same price. Once the drug is in the pharmacy, each owner chooses how much to mark it up. Because fewer than 10 percent of consumers comparison-shop for prescriptions the way they might for a quart of milk—and drug prices generally are not advertised—pharmacies don" t worry that higher prices will drive people away, says Stanford economist Alan Scorensen. There is a downside to hopping from drugstore to drugstore. If people price-shop, they" re going to lose some protection that comes from having one pharmacy track all your medications. Going to many pharmacies keeps one pharmacist from noticing potentially harmful interactions between prescriptions. Comparison-shopping is further complicated because pharmacies that have the best price on one drug don" t usually have the lowest prices across the board, so finding a good price on one drug at a pharmacy does not guarantee a cheaper total bill.

单选题 Charles and his wife haven"t traveled for long because______.

单选题 We learn that the oldest drugstore in Texas, Smith, ______.

单选题 Who may care LEAST about the varied prices?

单选题 Some drugstores can sell drugs at a higher price than others because______.

单选题 The word "downside" used in the last paragraph refers to______.