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Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

costplusdrugs.com

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Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#131

Post by benjaminbachman »

sjm-lbm wrote: post #27
gedy wrote: post #3

I hate to be so cynical if it helps people, but with his name plastered in the company and site like this, it feels like prep for a presidential run or some other political office.

If I'm understanding their basic message, the pitch is "we can get you cheaper prescriptions because we're a well run business that's making a rational but not exorbitant profit" and linking your branding to someone already famous for running businesses seems to be a very reasonable way to add credibility to that message. In other words, I don't think Cuban puts his name on all businesses he's involved in like this,…

Also it's a sketchier industry, so having a recognizable name certainly would assuage my fears about using it.

That said I have to assume Cuban is also getting a PR benefit here.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#132

Post by abfan1127 »

arcticbull wrote: post #64
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.

UK per capita health expenditure: $4650USD (#17). US per capita health expenditure: $11000USD (#1). I don't know what the 'left' is doing there but it seems very efficient.

does this include tax payments?

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#133

Post by woobar »

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

I think it is a little more than just a drug search engine. If you come to to a local pharmacy the price of a generic drug will $50, but if you show them the GoodRx referral with a price quote they will sell it for $5. Not sure what their relationship with the pharmacies are.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#134

Post by xyzzyz »

nrmitchi wrote: post #78
baby_wipe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because at the moment the only real alternative is “dying”?

This is only true for a fraction of all healthcare that’s actually consumed. For my family, over past 4 years, maybe 10% of our healthcare consumption carried a significant risk of death if we elected to not consume it.

As an explicit example, my wife took our infant daughter to a doctor the other day, because she was coughing and sneezing for a week already, and she wanted him to confirm that it’s most likely nothing to worry about. The doctor agreed. Insurance was billed $200, with $10 paid by us out of pocket. If we had to pay $200 out of pocket, we’d probably wait another week (and ended up not paying anything at all, because the coughing indeed disappeared before the end of the second week).

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#135

Post by user_7832 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #124
user_7832 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, in an economic sense, of asymmetry between the parties. You only have a handful of car companies to buy a $30k green 5-door sedan from. But Ford can easily afford to lose you as a customer - Ford is more important to you than you are to them. An extreme case of this (in some places) is the internet provider. If they know they're the only ones they can basically charge much more than if you were living in an…

Ford can easily afford to lose me, individually, but typically things that will cause them to lose me, will also cause them to lose many other customers. In practice, there is no actual asymmetry: if I don’t like Ford, I can just go to dealership next door, and so can millions of other customers, which means Ford needs to be careful.

Ford needs to be careful, yes. But Comcast in this example doesn't need to be. And for you to compete with Comcast by spinning your own ISP and having your own cables is not likely.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#136

Post by criddell »

SeanLuke wrote: post #116
bmelton wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you know more about how this works? I know it's not just a coupon scheme or search engine and I'd like to know how it works under the covers.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#137

Post by xyzzyz »

rnk wrote: post #98
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's incredibly naive. I can already shop for health plans in the us, and it's a shitty result. The rest of the wealthy western world has national health insurance and it works really well. The US is the broken system with declining health of its citizens, even before COVID.

> The rest of the wealthy western world has national health insurance and it works really well.

If you talk to people who immigrate to US from those countries with national health insurance, you’ll find that what you claim above is by no means a consensus.

For example, I immigrated to US from Poland, and in my opinion, US healthcare is much superior to Polish socialized healthcare, in terms of quality and availability. Cost wise, it’s more expensive, but my out of pocket costs are too small for me to care about: my employer pays for health insurance, which is a benefit on top of my wages, instead of being subtracted from my wages like in Poland. My deductible is low, and so are my copays and out of pocket maximums. This is opinion shared by most of my Polish friends in US.

Back in Poland, socialized healthcare is held in low regard, lines are long, quality is low, and a lot of people, especially in cities, pay for healthcare from private providers anyway.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#138

Post by 0des »

jansan wrote: post #75
0des wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also, supply and demand to a degree. y'all have some catching up to do before you're doing novalog shooters with deep fried dr pepper balls.

At ten times the market price of Europe margins must be huge and supply should skyrocket in a free market.

Listen, Im no phlebotomist or anything, I just calls it how I sees it.

Re: Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

#139

Post by xyzzyz »

user_7832 wrote: post #135
xyzzyz wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford can easily afford to lose me, individually, but typically things that will cause them to lose me, will also cause them to lose many other customers. In practice, there is no actual asymmetry: if I don’t like Ford, I can just go to dealership next door, and so can millions of other customers, which means Ford needs to be careful.

Ford needs to be careful, yes. But Comcast in this example doesn't need to be. And for you to compete with Comcast by spinning your own ISP and having your own cables is not likely.

Yes, I agree. My point is just that the asymmetry in market strength is not based purely on the size of the company relative to the consumer. In many competitive fields, it is the providers that are in a precarious situations instead of the customers, even if the providers are large corporations. Consider, for example, McDonalds: it’s a huge company, but it would be ridiculous to suggest that it enjoys significant market power over customers. Many such examples.
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