Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

beckershospitalreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 221 posts

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#131

Post by friedturkey »

adventured wrote: post #127
friedturkey wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is what got America into its health care mess. Other countries aren't paying thousands for simple pills or insulin.

When has the US had a Capitalist market for healthcare? The US has a particularly horrible hyper regulated, government shielded, cartel-based healthcare system and has for decades - the time during which its healthcare costs have skyrocketed out of control. The US could hardly be further away from Capitalism in how its healthcare system is structured.

If you really think dropping regulations and making it a free for all for multi-billion dollar corporations to fiddle with our health would improve anything, you're simply lying lol

Countries with more regulation and more control by the state have... prices that are a fraction of the US. Surprise. Just like countries with stricter environmental restrictions have fewer clear-cut forests, less polluted water, etc. Unbridled capitalism means more money at the top at the cost of everyone else. There's a balance to be found between making money and having some restraints.

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#132

Post by ipaddr »

samstave wrote: post #53
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #7

On one hand, we should obviously applaud anyone doing anything to bring down drug prices. On the other hand, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with just how much free marketing and PR is being applied to the "Mark Cuban Pharmacy" without much critical examination of what's going on here. Taking one of the examples straight from their homepage: They will sell you 30 Prozac tablets for $3.90: https://costplusdrugs.com/med…

But what rate is my insurance "billing" for the total price of the transaction with my insurance? So - while you may be able to get nearish the same price (before the shipping) So, if Mark Cuban the Billionaire can start a pharmacy model such as this, not dealing with insurance, then what precludes market competition with his pharmacy? Franchise license with supply chain to open ones own brick and mortar etc... Serio…

Drug companies selling directly?

Brick and Mortor stores selling without dealer discounts?

Or others copying and marking up only 10% or 5%?

I guess nothing but greed stopped this before.

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#133

Post by adam_arthur »

danachow wrote: post #120
adam_arthur wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should cut out the doctors for most of these too... Or at least allow people to continue to renew their medications after prescribed one time, rather than requiring further doctor's visits. Most things in medicine are expensive due to legal monopolies/improper regulations. e.g. no reason you shouldn't be able to buy prescription glasses for $10-20 dollars off the shelf. The main problem with medical costs is that it'…

I’m not saying freer markets in some aspects of medicine would be better - but the libertarian dream in medicine is probably very naive and fails to learn from history to boot (medicine, especially pharm was much freer 120 years ago - it didn’t work out too well). And of the big problems in medicine - a prescription for glasses (which isn’t really a medical service in the US - optometry is not a medical profession) j…

You can't order corrective lenses online without a prescription. You can order frames, or reading glasses. You need a prescription for both contacts or the lenses themselves.

Contacts would certainly be much cheaper without that hurdle.

And I bring up vision, because it's a common problem and for less well off folk with families it can be a big expense, basically entirely unnecessarily so. Imagine making 20k/year and you have to pay $500-$1000 a year for vision correction for your family. That's 2.5-5% of your pretax compensation

There's no handwaving here. Competitive markets require complete information. Information about costs to the consumer is basically entirely opaque. Over 90% of medical costs are non emergency, so if people could comparison shop, costs would go down. Also requires skin in the game (e.g. marginal cost per visit).

Look at plastic surgery for a good example of how free market/non insurance based medicine can fare. Many procedures are quite cheap, and while many are still expensive, much cheaper than necessary medical care covered by insurance. Also the number of doctors is still limited by the AMA, so even this is not fully competitive. There's an arbitrary cap on number of providers

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#134

Post by briHass »

ipaddr wrote: post #117
treis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) His prices aren't really any better than retail pharmacy with GoodRx. The generics for little money is well covered. (2) Costco actually does shit. They build buildings, hire pharmacists, buy inventory in bulk, and sell it to you in the store. Cuban has a website that takes 3 months to build and a little bit of transaction risk.

Do you want to pay the membership fee and a premium so they can build buildings, employ pharmacists to buy/finance/store/manage a large inventory or do you want to skip that and get the meds sent to you?

In fairness, I believe Costco (and Sams Club) allow you to use the pharmacy without having a membership. Unfortunately for me, no Costcos are close enough to make that worthwhile.

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#135

Post by treis »

ipaddr wrote: post #117
treis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) His prices aren't really any better than retail pharmacy with GoodRx. The generics for little money is well covered. (2) Costco actually does shit. They build buildings, hire pharmacists, buy inventory in bulk, and sell it to you in the store. Cuban has a website that takes 3 months to build and a little bit of transaction risk.

Do you want to pay the membership fee and a premium so they can build buildings, employ pharmacists to buy/finance/store/manage a large inventory or do you want to skip that and get the meds sent to you?

The point is not what Costco does. Its that they do anything at all. Cuban's company provides almost nothing of value.

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#136

Post by chevman »

There have been plenty of companies that have followed this pattern - GoodRx, SingleCare, ScriptRelief, etc.

As others have pointed out, Cuban is basically running a lead gen operation that then services customers drug needs via a white labeled site/fulfillment operation run by TruePill.

Any idea who is funding TruePill?

One of the largest PBMs in the industry - https://www.optumventures.com/portfolio/

Many ways to make money in pharma!

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#137

Post by ipaddr »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14
jeromegv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware millions of Americans don’t have such insurance?

Of course I am. Please don't be facetious. But did you even read the comparison? The drug I showed (which was highlighted on Mark Cuban's pharmacy's home page) was still half as expensive by going to a local Walmart. They're relying on a marketing campaign that "all other pharmacies are evil!" and they're hoping none of the media outlets bother to double-check their talking points. So far, it's working.

Walmart lowers some prices / raises others based on demand/competition historical prices and are regional. Things are not always cheaper. Everything is part of a huge system trying to extract the most profits.

Here is a tip for killing a product at a walmart store:

Buy a product out for 2/3 months. Inventory will raise. Stop buying the product. Walmart will delist. Do this at a few stores and get it delisted regionally. Do this to a few regions to kill it nationally. It could be a product that walmart carried for years.. they will still delist.

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#138

Post by ipaddr »

csdvrx wrote: post #103
ipaddr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a person with enough money he seems to work harder than he should to obtain more and more.

> For a person with enough money he seems to work harder than he should to obtain more and more. Some people like to max their points in videogames. Other like to max their $ in real life. The beauty of capitalism is that the effort of the latter end up benefiting us all.

He can't say I have enough points I don't need anymore. Use my high points as a reason to trust me that I will make less points than others if you shop here.

I also spend all of my time and energy trying to get more points.

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#139

Post by bobthepanda »

adam_arthur wrote: post #95
s1artibartfast wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They plan to both manufacture and resell. >15% markup plus pharmacy fee plus shipping and handling. This is the intent, and still cuts out at least 2 middle men between consumers and manufacturers: the insurance company and pharmacy benefit managers.

Should cut out the doctors for most of these too... Or at least allow people to continue to renew their medications after prescribed one time, rather than requiring further doctor's visits. Most things in medicine are expensive due to legal monopolies/improper regulations. e.g. no reason you shouldn't be able to buy prescription glasses for $10-20 dollars off the shelf. The main problem with medical costs is that it'…

Some medications are not renewed like this for good reason.

Some medications require regular monitoring to ensure that bad side effects aren't happening; PrEP requires checkups every 90 days to make sure kidney function is not getting impacted.

Re: Mark Cuban's pharmacy started with a cold email

#140

Post by adam_arthur »

bobthepanda wrote: post #139
adam_arthur wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should cut out the doctors for most of these too... Or at least allow people to continue to renew their medications after prescribed one time, rather than requiring further doctor's visits. Most things in medicine are expensive due to legal monopolies/improper regulations. e.g. no reason you shouldn't be able to buy prescription glasses for $10-20 dollars off the shelf. The main problem with medical costs is that it'…

Some medications are not renewed like this for good reason. Some medications require regular monitoring to ensure that bad side effects aren't happening; PrEP requires checkups every 90 days to make sure kidney function is not getting impacted.

That's fine but many don't require it for good reason, thus should be exempted.

People can easily seek out prescriptions as it is today, they just need to find a doctor and say the right things. This is common with TRT, Modafinil, Cannabis etc the barrier as it exists today is mostly artificial.

We allow people to drink alcohol, so any drug less dangerous than that shouldn't be gated

Post reply on HN