31–40 of 221 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that I have to drive to a local walmart and deal with insurance. That sounds harder.
Insurance is as simple as handing your insurance card to the pharmacy once . After that, it's in their system. People generally go to the store to buy groceries anyway, so it's not a big deal to pick up a prescription while shopping.
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…
Can you elaborate on how this works? Are they giving you 30 days' supply of drugs for only $4, even if you have no insurance? Are they charging both insured/uninsured people $4, but billing the insured people more (via insurance) to make up the difference?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Except nobody should actually be paying $22.80 for generic Prozac. You can drive to any local Walmart and get it for $4 and they will bill your insurance, which will count toward your deductible. Also there's a ton of stuff that I can buy for $5 at the store and get shipped to me for $10 (I don't own a car so am very aware of this sort of thing), so I'm not sure what the general complaint is here.
Continue reading to the part where the same medication is $8.80 from Mark Cuban's pharmacy. The price at Walmart is less than half, regardless of whether or not insurance is involved. The deal is worse for the consumer whether or not insurance is involved.
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…
I guess the wait time and complexity of ADC might not make sense for those without insurance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that I have to drive to a local walmart and deal with insurance. That sounds harder.
I don't know about other insurance plans, but mine is virtually contact-free: my doctor prescribes me something, and I pick it up at a nearby pharmacy within an hour. The billing is taken care of for me, and I don't hear a peep from the insurance company other than a line item on their monthly letter. OTOH, this seems like a blessing for the un[der]insured. But I took OP's comment to be one of critical optimism, not…
This is basically standard in 2022.
My local pharmacy will even let me convert prescriptions to mail-order with automatic refill with a few clicks online.
They'll also phone up my doctor and ask for a 90-day prescription to make it easier if I want. They'll also call the doctor and request refills when the prescription is up.
> OTOH, this seems like a blessing for the un[der]insured.
Yes, but only if people read the fine print. As in my example above, it's actually more expensive to use Mark Cuban's pharmacy than your local Walmart for many prescriptions.
They are relying on people's assumption that it's the cheapest pharmacy around, and nobody in the media seems to be doing anything to investigate that claim. A couple minutes of research shows it's not really true.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Needing to have it shipped is not a simple "more expensive". Going to a store costs money. It also costs time. It's pretty easy for that to hit $5.
> Going to a store costs money. It also costs time. It's pretty easy for that to hit $5. People need groceries. They're going to the store anyway. If you can wait for a mail-order prescription to arrive, you can probably wait until your next grocery shopping trip to get it filled in person.
You haven't found a drug that's "more expensive", you've just found that shipping is a cost.
I also learned from that book that generic drugs are not produced by the same process as the brand-name drugs. I thought it was basically an open-sourcing of the drug and it's not that at all. They use the same ingredients, but the generic manufacturers need to reverse-engineer the proprietary manufacturing processes of the big brands, because important details are often deliberately omitted from the patents.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Continue reading to the part where the same medication is $8.80 from Mark Cuban's pharmacy. The price at Walmart is less than half, regardless of whether or not insurance is involved. The deal is worse for the consumer whether or not insurance is involved.
I’d pay $5 not to drive. Plus could the shipping be amortized over number of items.
Many normal pharmacies also have mail-order options. My neighborhood pharmacy includes free shipping, whereas Mark Cuban charges an extra $5.
I'm baffled that so many people are consuming Mark Cuban's marketing/PR without questioning if it's really the cheapest option. It's like everyone read the press releases and just decided it sounds correct.
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…
> Except nobody should actually be paying $22.80 for generic Prozac. You can drive to any local Walmart and get it for $4 and they will bill your insurance, which will count toward your deductible.
FWIW I thought this meant that it was $4 because of “your insurance” or “deductible” but I think you meant it’s $4 for people that aren’t insured? And people that are insured get it for free?
"I could make a fortune from this," Mr. Cuban told Texas Monthly last fall. "But I won't. I've got enough money. I'd rather f— up the drug industry in every way possible." Truly hope that's an honest statement, wish them the best if that's the case.
Even if it’s an honest statement, what happens when Cuban dies or otherwise no longer controls the business? Inevitably someone will take control and raise prices to match the rest of the industry. The root problem is having for profit companies involved in providing critical medical treatments. The solution is for people to band together and create an entity (the government) to provide these treatments at cost witho…
I don't know that this level of fatalism is appropriate, and if it sets the new level for the rest of the industry at a lower rate that would be good!
A co-op can do what you are describing, seems like someone should send Mr. Cuban a cold email asking him to re-incorporate his venture as a co-op!