Medicines with huge discounts: an online pharmacy with very favorable prices will be opened in the USA

Tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company is proposing an online pharmacy that sells generic drugs at a discount. The publication told more about the project Market Place.

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For now, the company will operate as a prescription pharmacy, allowing it to be less regulated than a generic company, although it must register with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and meet certain manufacturing requirements.

Newly established company Cost Plus Drug Company charges customers the same price as they charge for the manufacture of these medicines, plus a 15% surcharge and a pharmacist's commission. It delivers medicines to all US states except North Carolina.

Experts say US drug prices are exorbitant and out of reach for many Americans. But political efforts to resolve the problem have stalled in Congress.

Last year, Democrats unveiled a plan that would lower prescription drug prices for older adults and allow Medicare to negotiate prices directly with drug manufacturers. However, this bill was never passed.

Where the government has failed, the private market steps in. Cuban is promoting his company as part of the solution. Experts are cautiously optimistic, but are ambivalent about whether the company as a whole will be able to change drug prices for consumers.

The new service, which promises to be "dramatically transparent," says that 30 pieces of the 400 mg cancer drug Imatinib, for example, will cost $47,40, compared with a retail price of more than $9 at other pharmacies.

In total, Cost Plus Drug offers over 100 generics. According to the website, the company does not currently accept health insurance.

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A 2021 survey by Gallup and West Health found that 18 million Americans, or about 7% of US adults, cannot pay for at least one drug prescribed by their doctor. Roughly one in 48 Americans said they missed a drug in the past year, a rate nearly double that of Americans making less than $000 a year.

Americans pay more for prescription drugs than people in any other developed country. On average, they spend more than $1300 a year on prescription drugs, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

When you set up an account on the site, Cost Plus will provide you with a prescription request form that your doctor fills out. Then he must send it to Cost Plus, for which he should call the company, send a fax or email.

Will this affect prices?

Cindy Parks Thomas, professor of health policy at Brandeis University, said the entire pharmaceutical industry is under protection and we don't know how much we're really paying for a given drug.

“Perhaps everyone would agree that the entry of new entrants into the market and the attempt to reduce these problematic prices is a good thing anyway,” she said.

However, experts say the company is not addressing high drug prices because it does not cover all medicines.

For example, according to Thomas, insulin — a common but difficult drug to manufacture that can cost about $6000 a year — is not offered.

Stacey Dusetsina, assistant professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University, noted that the service does not include branded drugs, which cost about 80% to 85% more than generics, according to medical company GoodRx.

Companies are allowed to charge brand-name drugs "as high as the market can bear," Dusetsina said.

“Over time, the list price has been shown to go up substantially for some drugs, even if the price your health plan pays for that drug doesn't go up,” she said.

The company does not accept health insurance, which is a key reason why it can offer these drugs at a low cost.

“They avoid the administrative problem of dealing with health insurance and setting up reimbursement in these systems,” the assistant professor explained. “So in a way, it’s just paperwork.”

She explained that for those with health insurance, the purchase of these drugs may not count towards the deduction from their insurance.

“Going beyond their health insurance could result in them not being close enough to complete their yearly plan,” Dusetsina said. “Therefore, you need to think a little about what will be more profitable.”

What are the benefits of the company

Although the service has some limitations, experts welcome the news of the company's debut and think it will help people who are having difficulty getting medicines.

Stacey Dusetsina believes that this pharmacy can help those who do not have health insurance and who have to pay cash for their drugs or have difficulty buying them, even if they have insurance.

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“We know that many people have to pay for insurance when they get prescription drugs. But now they will realize that they can get a better deal at Cost Plus Drug,” said Dusetsina.

Jerry, a 36-year-old Bay Area tech worker, said he pays roughly $300-$350 a month for two prescription drugs (including insurance and discount cards).

One of these is available on Cost Plus Drug for $33. The price he usually paid for this drug was about $130.

He has already contacted his doctor to write him a prescription for it.

“The medications I take literally help me survive,” explained Jerry, who uses these prescriptions to treat a chronic illness. Although he is in a “very good financial position” and can afford these drugs, he finds it difficult to understand how less well-off people can cope with such payments.

“How can they afford it? It's just unbelievable that life-saving drugs are so expensive, Jerry is surprised. “When I started taking these drugs, I was always wondering how people can charge so much money for a life-saving drug.”

Benefit manager replacement

Cost Plus Drug said it wants to eliminate the traditional Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM) model of intermediaries between Big Pharma and insurers/large employers.

Their main task is to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies in order to get the lowest prices for prescription drugs. Ashley Swanson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, said you can think of them as real estate agents.

Contracts between these parties are secret.

“No one really knows how badly they are being ripped off. No one knows what kind of discount the pharmacy got,” Jeffrey Joyce, an economist at the University of Southern California, said in an interview. At the time, the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute said managers were important in controlling drug costs and providing expertise.

“I think most people would agree that we have moved away from rational drug pricing in the US, given the amount we pay for drugs and health care in general,” said Trevor Royce, medical director of Flatiron Health.

Royce, who has an academic position at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in the department of oncology, is convinced there are "many culprits" in this, but wholesalers and managers alike are contributing to high drug prices.

Thomas of Brandeis University says one of the key differences between traditional PBM and Cost Plus Drug is that the latter tends to be transparent about pricing.

But Thomas said that while she's not a fan of pharmacy benefit managers, they still offer important services. For example, they can ensure that medications taken by patients do not conflict with each other.

Ducecina noted, among other things, that they can alert you to potential drug interactions, which is why she thinks it's important that people talk to their doctors and pharmacists "about all the drugs they take, even if they pay out-of-pocket for some that aren't in their plan." health insurance, or buy medicines in different pharmacies.

While there are unique aspects to the Cost Plus Drug model, Royce said, there are other companies offering cheaper drugs that are trying to disrupt the pharmaceutical market.

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Health experts pointed to Blueberry Pharmacy in Pittsburgh, a landline company that also offers generics, and GoodRx, a website and app that allows customers to compare drug prices.

Royce said some of them, such as GoodRx, have been successful.

“GoodRx came up with a nice way to show how much prescription drugs cost at various retailers and then provide coupons,” he remarked.

Own factory

In addition to launching this new online pharmacy, Cost Plus Drug is also building a $11 million drug manufacturing plant in Dallas, Texas.

Dusetsina said it is too early to say how these ambitions will materialize, but she believes it will help create more competitive prices.

“Prices for some generics can go up in ways that are really hard to explain,” she said. “It's common to think of generics as cheaper options. But we have seen that there are some areas where there are no direct competitors in the generic market.”

She said it might be because there is only one company that makes a particular generic, and that gives them the right to set prices as high as they want.

For better or worse, Thomas says, the US has "a really well-established pharmaceutical industry."

According to her, this means that changing the industry will not be easy.

But while she says we don't know how much the company will actually make a difference, Thomas is "looking forward to seeing how it develops."

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