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Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

costplusdrugs.com

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Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#111

Post by tomp »

arcticbull wrote: post #48

As always the issue with privatized social services is that the goal is to make money, not to provide a service so the incentives are fundamentally misaligned. For-profit care providers make money when the fail to provide care. When they fail to cover procedures. When they can substitute lower-quality or less effective goods and services. When they can sell you catastrophic cover with deductibles and co-pays too high…

Um, what?

In theory, free market healthcare should improve alignment.

Insurance companies pay procedures and make money when people are less sick. Hospitals make money when they perform procedures. Insurance companies are therefore incentivised to only pay procedures from competent hospitals, the ones that won’t result in more follow-up costs.

The problem is, of course, it’s not a free market - neither on the hospital side (prices are not public) nor on the insurance side (it’s much more affordable through employment)

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#112

Post by Gordonjcp »

As someone living in a country with first-world healthcare I think it's insane that you have to pay out of your own pocket for medicines, and doubly so that it takes a private company run by someone trying to make *less* money off people to do the job the government should be doing.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#113

Post by cwmma »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #96
arcticbull wrote: post #48

As always the issue with privatized social services is that the goal is to make money, not to provide a service so the incentives are fundamentally misaligned. For-profit care providers make money when the fail to provide care. When they fail to cover procedures. When they can substitute lower-quality or less effective goods and services. When they can sell you catastrophic cover with deductibles and co-pays too high…

> Socializing the whole thing is significantly better. As a Canadian I highly disagree. And anecdotally many health care providers from Canada agree with my take. People frequently die, or get sicker, as they wait their turn in months long queues or lack of supply due to government quotas. There is nothing stopping the government from substituting lower-quality, less effective procedures when their MBAs come in an co…

> People frequently die, or get sicker, as they wait their turn in months long queues or lack of supply due to government quotas.

There are often months long waits for here too, try getting a dermatology appointment, we just also have the privilege of paying for it out of pocket as preventative skin care checks are not actually classified as preventative medicine so it counts towards your deductible meaning you have to pay the first $2000.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#114

Post by armitron »

GiorgioG wrote: post #25
ipnon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the homepage they say they markup the manufacturing cost by 15%, include $3 for pharmacy labor, and finally apply shipping and handling based on location. It seem even with such healthy margins they're still an order of magnitude cheaper for some medications. Big Pharma looks obscene sometimes.

> Big Pharma looks obscene sometimes. Sometimes? The medical industrial complex's MO is to squeeze as many people (in the USA) as they can for every penny they have. The American sheeple have been duped to vote against their own best interest (a single-payer system). We don't have the best medical care in the world and we pay at least 10x for it.

Your single payer system would end up as yet another bloated inefficient government bureaucracy that never goes away. NHS would pale in comparison. No thanks.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#115

Post by ikurei »

baby_wipe wrote: post #71
arcticbull wrote: post #48

As always the issue with privatized social services is that the goal is to make money, not to provide a service so the incentives are fundamentally misaligned. For-profit care providers make money when the fail to provide care. When they fail to cover procedures. When they can substitute lower-quality or less effective goods and services. When they can sell you catastrophic cover with deductibles and co-pays too high…

If for-profit companies keep doing all these awful things, why people keep paying them money?

I have no clue if the bushings in my car really did need replacing. Not even sure what they are. My mechanic sure has an incentive to say they do, as he'll make money that way, but if what he says sounds kinda reasonable and I don't get weird vibes from him, I am not taking a gamble with my 1600kg, 120km/h destroyer-of-pedestrians-and-passengers.

Most people aren't medical doctors, and most aren't gonna gamble with their health. It's a transaction where one side has way more information, less to loose, and therefore more power. Hopefully they use that power for good.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#116

Post by SeanLuke »

bmelton wrote: post #106
criddell wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does GoodRX work?

They're a deal site, basically You need in They search pharmacy prices in for + You get back a list of where it is cheapest to have fulfilled by a pharmacy in

This isn't correct. GoodRx makes money by partnering with Pharmacy Benefits Managers. It's taking advantage of a loophole in the US's extraordinarily convoluted drug pricing system.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#117

Post by arcticbull »

tomp wrote: post #111
arcticbull wrote: post #48

As always the issue with privatized social services is that the goal is to make money, not to provide a service so the incentives are fundamentally misaligned. For-profit care providers make money when the fail to provide care. When they fail to cover procedures. When they can substitute lower-quality or less effective goods and services. When they can sell you catastrophic cover with deductibles and co-pays too high…

Um, what? In theory, free market healthcare should improve alignment. Insurance companies pay procedures and make money when people are less sick. Hospitals make money when they perform procedures. Insurance companies are therefore incentivised to only pay procedures from competent hospitals, the ones that won’t result in more follow-up costs. The problem is, of course, it’s not a free market - neither on the hospita…

'A key feature of free markets is the absence of coerced (forced) transactions or conditions on transactions.' [1] Healthcare is not such a market. If you have a stab wound and you're bleeding out, there's no supply and demand, there's no ability for you to have market participants compete for your business. It's 'pay me or die.' Ditto substantially any major medical issue. This is, in my opinion a coerced transaction, and therefore, not a free market.

This is true of prisons (you can't exactly have private prisons compete for your business). Of fire departments (I'm not going to call for quotes while my house burns down). Of police departments.

If it's not a free market, it should be socialized, imo.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freemarket.asp

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#118

Post by UnpossibleJim »

arcticbull wrote: post #48

As always the issue with privatized social services is that the goal is to make money, not to provide a service so the incentives are fundamentally misaligned. For-profit care providers make money when the fail to provide care. When they fail to cover procedures. When they can substitute lower-quality or less effective goods and services. When they can sell you catastrophic cover with deductibles and co-pays too high…

Just before I ask this question, I want to let it be known I am for base healthcare as a public right, as well as public 4 year universities (4 year community colleges, basically) and a low UBI - I've basically become a hippy, somehow, in my old age... I'm not sure how that happened. But with that out of the way, on to my question...

Do you think that part of the reason that America is so attractive to pharmaceutical innovation is because of the obscene profits that can be made in the prescription space that is not only allowed by our laws, but encouraged by our politicians?

If we were to socialize our pharmaceutical sector, which would involve putting caps on pricing, do you think this would make innovation into treatment which involves huge upfront costs in research a non-starter?

Would neutering the profit motive and corporate greed in our pharmaceutical sectors revert our pharma studies back to university programs and corporate tax write offs/good will programs and the occasional government budget surplus when they've decided to not funnel it towards another uneccessary war?

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#119

Post by jrochkind1 »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #77
an9n wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope you make a better fist of it than the UK - the NHS is currently unreformable to any significant degree, due to it being weaponised by the left.

We all know the answer to this. Every single person in the world. The way to fix the US system is for the health insurance market to be regulated like the auto insurance market, i.e., break up the state monopolies. Then for our employers to give us the money they're paying on our behalf. Then we could shop for a health insurance plan like auto insurance. Within a couple of years, the market would start sorting out th…

I'm not following what aspect of US health insurance you consider a state monopoly, can you be more explicit?

There are a variety of different non-state companies providing health insurance in the US, no? What am I missing, how is this a state monopoly?

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#120

Post by whitepoplar »

0des wrote: post #59
treis wrote: post #53

From the time this was posted two days ago: This keeps showing up but it's total bullshit. Cuban wants to take 15% of the transaction for running a web site and processing payment. They're not manufacturing drugs. They're not buying drugs. They're not shipping drugs. They're not doing anything at all besides taking your order and giving it to someone to do all those things. It's not a charity. It's a profitable busin…

I mean if you're old enough to remember broadcast.com I don't think anybody had high expectations.

I'm curious, what was broadcast.com like? What were the issues?
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