<story><title>Mark Cuban&apos;s pharmacy started with a cold email</title><url>https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/mark-cuban-s-pharmacy-started-with-a-cold-email.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>On one hand, we should obviously applaud anyone doing anything to bring down drug prices.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I&amp;#x27;m increasingly uncomfortable with just how much free marketing and PR is being applied to the &amp;quot;Mark Cuban Pharmacy&amp;quot; without much critical examination of what&amp;#x27;s going on here.&lt;p&gt;Taking one of the examples straight from their homepage: They will sell you 30 Prozac tablets for $3.90: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;costplusdrugs.com&amp;#x2F;medications&amp;#x2F;fluoxetine-10mg-capsule&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;costplusdrugs.com&amp;#x2F;medications&amp;#x2F;fluoxetine-10mg-capsul...&lt;/a&gt; They list the &amp;quot;Retail price at other pharmacies&amp;quot; as $22.80 and claim to save you $18.90. Fantastic, right?&lt;p&gt;Except nobody should actually be paying $22.80 for generic Prozac. You can drive to any local Walmart and get it for $4 &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; they will bill your insurance, which will count toward your deductible. (Walmart has a list of their $4 and other cheap prescriptions here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.walmart.com&amp;#x2F;cp&amp;#x2F;4-prescriptions&amp;#x2F;1078664&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.walmart.com&amp;#x2F;cp&amp;#x2F;4-prescriptions&amp;#x2F;1078664&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;p&gt;Mark Cuban&amp;#x27;s pharmacy, however, refuses to deal with your insurance and they&amp;#x27;re going to charge an extra $5.00 shipping at checkout. So now you&amp;#x27;re paying basically twice as much to Mark Cuban&amp;#x27;s pharmacy even though they&amp;#x27;re telling you the entire way that you&amp;#x27;re actually saving money.&lt;p&gt;I also checked my personal insurance and my negotiated rate for the same medication is also less than $5 at local pharmacies.&lt;p&gt;Now of course it&amp;#x27;s likely that other drugs will work out to be cheaper on Mark Cuban&amp;#x27;s pharmacy than any other combination of your personal insurance and local pharmacies, but that&amp;#x27;s far from guaranteed.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m concerned that Mark Cuban is capitalizing on people&amp;#x27;s lack of understanding about how insurance works and how easy it can be to look up drug prices (use your insurance company&amp;#x27;s website or just pick up the phone and call your pharmacy, they&amp;#x27;ll check for you). His profit margins, however small, rely on people skipping their insurance and going straight to Mark Cuban&amp;#x27;s pharmacy. That could be fine in some circumstance, but in others, perhaps many other cases, the customer would come out behind by opting out of their insurance.&lt;p&gt;I wish some media outlets would actually dig into this instead of endlessly recycling the company&amp;#x27;s own talking points verbatim.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>briHass</author><text>&amp;gt;I&amp;#x27;m concerned that Mark Cuban is capitalizing on people&amp;#x27;s lack of understanding about how insurance works and how easy it can be to look up drug prices (use your insurance company&amp;#x27;s website or just pick up the phone and call your pharmacy, they&amp;#x27;ll check for you)&lt;p&gt;That certainly hasn&amp;#x27;t been my experience. Most pharmacies I&amp;#x27;ve tried this with need to actually &amp;#x27;fill&amp;#x27; the script and run it through insurance to get a final price. And, in the era of &amp;#x27;COVID-related staffing shortages&amp;#x27;, good luck calling the pharmacy and actually getting someone on the line.&lt;p&gt;The sad thing is, all these pharmacies know about GoodRx and other discount providers. They could stop playing games and just run all scripts through these providers to get a &amp;#x27;cash price&amp;#x27;, but they don&amp;#x27;t. It&amp;#x27;s honestly like shopping at Kohls where if you aren&amp;#x27;t stacking coupons, you&amp;#x27;re the sucker paying too much.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know about Cuban&amp;#x27;s mechanics here, but a website that shows you the final price, no games&amp;#x2F;codes, is a great addition to the market.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mark Cuban&apos;s pharmacy started with a cold email</title><url>https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/mark-cuban-s-pharmacy-started-with-a-cold-email.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>On one hand, we should obviously applaud anyone doing anything to bring down drug prices.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I&amp;#x27;m increasingly uncomfortable with just how much free marketing and PR is being applied to the &amp;quot;Mark Cuban Pharmacy&amp;quot; without much critical examination of what&amp;#x27;s going on here.&lt;p&gt;Taking one of the examples straight from their homepage: They will sell you 30 Prozac tablets for $3.90: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;costplusdrugs.com&amp;#x2F;medications&amp;#x2F;fluoxetine-10mg-capsule&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;costplusdrugs.com&amp;#x2F;medications&amp;#x2F;fluoxetine-10mg-capsul...&lt;/a&gt; They list the &amp;quot;Retail price at other pharmacies&amp;quot; as $22.80 and claim to save you $18.90. Fantastic, right?&lt;p&gt;Except nobody should actually be paying $22.80 for generic Prozac. You can drive to any local Walmart and get it for $4 &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; they will bill your insurance, which will count toward your deductible. (Walmart has a list of their $4 and other cheap prescriptions here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.walmart.com&amp;#x2F;cp&amp;#x2F;4-prescriptions&amp;#x2F;1078664&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.walmart.com&amp;#x2F;cp&amp;#x2F;4-prescriptions&amp;#x2F;1078664&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;p&gt;Mark Cuban&amp;#x27;s pharmacy, however, refuses to deal with your insurance and they&amp;#x27;re going to charge an extra $5.00 shipping at checkout. So now you&amp;#x27;re paying basically twice as much to Mark Cuban&amp;#x27;s pharmacy even though they&amp;#x27;re telling you the entire way that you&amp;#x27;re actually saving money.&lt;p&gt;I also checked my personal insurance and my negotiated rate for the same medication is also less than $5 at local pharmacies.&lt;p&gt;Now of course it&amp;#x27;s likely that other drugs will work out to be cheaper on Mark Cuban&amp;#x27;s pharmacy than any other combination of your personal insurance and local pharmacies, but that&amp;#x27;s far from guaranteed.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m concerned that Mark Cuban is capitalizing on people&amp;#x27;s lack of understanding about how insurance works and how easy it can be to look up drug prices (use your insurance company&amp;#x27;s website or just pick up the phone and call your pharmacy, they&amp;#x27;ll check for you). His profit margins, however small, rely on people skipping their insurance and going straight to Mark Cuban&amp;#x27;s pharmacy. That could be fine in some circumstance, but in others, perhaps many other cases, the customer would come out behind by opting out of their insurance.&lt;p&gt;I wish some media outlets would actually dig into this instead of endlessly recycling the company&amp;#x27;s own talking points verbatim.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ctoth</author><text>&amp;gt; In 2020, 8.6 percent of people, or 28.0 million, did not have health insurance at any point during the year[0].&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.census.gov&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;demo&amp;#x2F;p60-274.html#:~:text=In%202020%2C%208.6%20percent%20of,part%20of%202020%20was%2091.4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.census.gov&amp;#x2F;library&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;demo&amp;#x2F;p60-27...&lt;/a&gt;.</text></comment>