The cost of living in South Africa is through the roof.

Everyone wants to get more bang for their buck, so it pays to know which outlet offers the best value.

Staying healthy could cost you an arm and a leg, especially if you don’t have full medical aid coverage, so here’s some handy insight.

Last year we checked in on the cost of medication at Dis-Chem, Clicks, Checkers, Pick n Pay and Spar, and now it’s time to do the same.

Here’s BusinessTech:

Along with many privately-owned pharmacies across South Africa, companies such as Dis-Chem and Clicks Pharmacies have made dispensaries widely available to the public.

Pick n Pay has its in-store pharmacy PnP Dispensary, while Shoprite and Checkers has over 145 MediRite Pharmacies in stores across the country.

Spar also has an in-store Pharmacy at Spar brand in select locations. It should be noted, however, that Spar stores are individually owned, and prices can vary.

BusinessTech compared prices across these pharmacies by buying nine ‘over the counter’ items to find out which store had the lowest prices.

We ran two comparisons – first the true price basket, which shows the prices of items where promotional discounts were taken out of the equation. The second comparison shows how promotional prices can alter the overall basket price.

Here are the results:

Dis-Chem comes out as the cheapest, followed by Pick n Pay, Clicks and then Checkers MediRite. Spar had the highest price.

Winter heralds in flu season, so there have been a number of specials on cold and flu medication.

In the full basket, including seasonal discounts, Clicks emerges as the best buy option, having cut the prices in all but three of the products.

Checkers MediRite has the second most affordable promotional basket, followed by Pick n Pay, Dis-Chem and Spar.

The following table illustrates the price comparison using the promotional offers:

A comparison of like-for-like baskets between last year and this year shows an increase of 8% in ‘over the counter’ medication prices.

Checkers had the highest price increase:

Tough times.

Next, I would like to see a comparison of the waiting times. It’s never a good look when you need a ticket to get to the counter, and you’re encouraged to do the rest of your shopping while you wait.

[source:businesstech]