I have spent some time today researching the buzz behind this new “Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Pharmacy”.
And while I love Shark Tank and nothing makes me happier than cutting out the vampires that are pharmacy middlemen (PBMs), I feel there is an elephant in the room that is not being mentioned in any of the articles I have read:
LOCAL INDEPENDENT PHARMACIES HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS….and they do it better! 
Example: “Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Pharmacy’s” flagship low-priced item, Imatinib.
In every article and post Mr. Cuban’s pharmacy mentions that they will save patients $9,657 on this one product. Sorry, but THIS IS DISHONEST.
NOWHERE, not even the worst of the worst pharmacies, charge anyone anything NEAR $10,000 for 30 tablets of Imatinib 400mg.
The second photo on this post is a shot from GoodRx (which should prove how dishonest they are also) where you can see that no pharmacy’s price is near that estimate, but still much higher than the $47.40 that Mark Cuban advertises.
(-This is how customers are mislead into believing GoodRx does something. $127 is a lot better than $6,000, right?-)
Mark Cuban’s pharmacy chose Imatinib (Gleevec) because it’s a cancer medication and his team knew that it would get great press for them to be the savior of cancer patients…all while being dishonest about competitors prices.
So before you trust that a billionaire is truly out to help you, maybe just check with the store down the road?
Oh, and by-the-way, Golden Isles Pharmacy’s price for Imatinib is 40 cents cheaper than Mark Cuban’s price.
Last week, I got a new Rx med – a topical cream – and I am in my annual deductible… I didn’t pay much attention to the Rx receipt – until I got home… We have Humana Part D… but I started to filing the receipt away and notice that in the lower left hand corner of the receipt INSURANCE PAID $-7.00
this is the 2nd or 3rd year we have been using Humana Part D and I have seen receipts where it showed that Humana PAID NOTHING on a Rx.
The Rx was not a real cheap, a ONE OUNCE TUBE and the charge was $45.16… I called the pharmacy back and talked to the PIC.. if she could help me understand as to why Humana charged me $7.00 MORE … she told me that she could have charged me a lower CASH PRICE… but that it would not be applied to my Humana Deductible… so HUMANA UP CHARGED ME … about 18%…
I know how these things work- the pharmacy computer talks to the Humana computer and the Humana computer tells the pharmacy computer how much the pt – in this incident, that would be me – owes for the particular prescription.
I checked the tube of Cream and it is marked RX ONLY… and it was ONE OUNCE size
The only ingredient in the cream has been around FOREVER… and this tube was 3% strength….
So… I started doing some RESEARCH… and found out that I could buy at AMAZON – as a OTC … TWO – SIX Ounce tubes of the same active ingredient but it was 5%…
and Amazon wanted $44.99 for the TWO TUBES – total of TWELVE OUNCES.
For those of you… that math is not your strongest trait… the Rx cream was 45.16/Oz and the one coming from Amazon is $3.75/Oz and 66% MORE POTENT.
I think that I am going to talk to Humana tomorrow – and I doubt that I will get a accurate answer … nor my $7.00 back.
Filed under: General Problems
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