Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs

Discussed before: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25932233" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25932233</a>

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 for you to actually afford to use it - the way a gym membership makes money selling subscriptions they know you won&#x27;t use.<p>This is by definition an improvement over what America has, so I welcome it. That doesn&#x27;t change the fact it&#x27;s an umbrella in a hurricane, so it&#x27;s really not that interesting.<p>Socializing the whole thing is significantly better. Remember America already has socialized medicine for 40% of the population. It is long past time to up that to 100%.

From the time this was posted two days ago:<p>This keeps showing up but it&#x27;s total bullshit. Cuban wants to take 15% of the transaction for running a web site and processing payment. They&#x27;re not manufacturing drugs. They&#x27;re not buying drugs. They&#x27;re not shipping drugs. They&#x27;re not doing anything at all besides taking your order and giving it to someone to do all those things. It&#x27;s not a charity. It&#x27;s a profitable business and a very profitable one at that.<p>Oh yeah, and the prices aren&#x27;t lower than what you can get using GoodRX.

There&#x27;s a $5 shipping fee that isn&#x27;t included until check out, so for a lot of cheap drugs it&#x27;s still cheaper to go thru GoodRX&#x2F;Walmart&#x2F;other discount programs.

More competition in this space is good and for certain drugs may be a huge boon but for the average prescription, consumers should probably stick to goodrx to find the best deal. In my case, Cuban offers a very reasonable $7.50 for a 90 ct of a drug I searched (not including shipping, which others here say is $5?)<p>On GoodRx I see the same drug at a local grocery store for $6.84, (Costco is $8.49) and online pharmacies like geniusRx are $4.50 (s&#x2F;h unknown). My health insurance through a local pharmacy would cost $14.38<p>I don&#x27;t like all the advertising on costplus about how they&#x27;re saving you like $490 out of $500 on Rx, because everyone else is doing that to. There is literally nothing new here. My local grocery store beat his price by 10%+. But as long as you know that the &quot;pricing reduction&quot; is total bunk and not a competitive advantage and just an explanation of the current state of the industry that EVERYONE is doing, then it&#x27;s one more option that could be the lowest for you.<p>In my case, it didn&#x27;t help me.

I switched to this after the 3rd time getting abused by Walgreens. In my area they dont even acknowledge you when you walk to the counter and forget your refills. The pharmacists just blatantly lie to you that it will be ready at this point. They are overwhelmed and Walgreens doesnt want to pay for more pharmacists while not limiting how much business they can reasonably take. Ordering has made things easier for me and I feel like less of a buffoon standing there in that dumpster fire.

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.

I just found out that insulin is ten times more expensive in the US compare to Europe. This can hardly be explained without the existance of a price cartel and something seems to be really rotten in the US drug market. Let&#x27;s hope that efforts like this will help bring prices down to a more reasonable level.

I looked up a few of the medications I take and the prices were about even with what I pay at Costco. This is great if it is more accessible for more people

I noticed they have Famotidine and says it requires a prescription for the 20mg but you can buy that amount otc. Their 60ct is only 9 cents cheaper than the Target brand. So I guess you definitely would want to cross-shop a bit.<p>I still think this is a great service regardless.

So is the cost actually low? The last time this came up on HN people agreed the costs are standard and the other pharmacies do not charge the high prices on the comparisons.

Why is this keep getting spammed on HN?

So does this work by essentially bypassing the PBM rebates process, and directly negotiating with the manufacturers?

As someone living in a country with first-world healthcare I think it&#x27;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.

The FAQ question I was hoping to see, but did not, was &quot;How is this different from GoodRX?&quot;

From the faq;<p>&gt; Why are your prices so cheap?<p>Not native English, but that is not English right?<p>Edit; guess my school English told me that is wrong ;<p>- prices are low<p>- this medicine is cheap<p>So learned something ;) thanks

How is the cost so low? we bypass the pharmacy middleman.<p>ooooh okay that is really neat<p>How do I get the drugs? order it from our pharmacy.<p>Wat?

Why is this being pushed multiple times on Reddit and on Hacker News? Seems like a marketing campaign for clout.

With the repostings, does this hint that they&#x27;re looking for additional funding&#x2F;investment or attempting to further scale the business.