Prescriptions are a total racket. A good portion of actual medication literally costs a few dollars at most. Then there’s layer upon layer of bloat and bureaucracy that add no value but drive the cost up 10x or more. It’s totally bonkers.
When these Rx cards and Marc Cuban CostPlus drugs came out where you just pay cash and a fraction of the price I thought there must be some catch or scam here. But turns out no, they’re just cutting out all the middleware bloat and selling you the meds at a defensible markup plus their logistics costs. Love what these guys are doing.
The fact that something like that even exists highlights how corrupt and broken the health insurance companies have become. It’s their job to get better prices at scale and yet somehow they manage to sell at prices far worse that Joe Blogs off the street can get with cash.
In many ways the quality of care in the US is far better than what folks get elsewhere, which in part is probably why there isn’t a total patient rebellion, but the US’s challenges are all rooted in massive administrative overhead. If we got rid of that and had a lean system where healthcare providers can do their job without interference there would be plenty of money to go around for amazing care at lower cost.