Following up on previous news about Billionaire Mark Cuban's new online pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs has hit the ground running with the potential to save the US Government approximately $3.6 billion annually. After launching in January of this year, the online website now has over 300 generic drugs.
Cost Plus Drug's goal is to make the cost of drugs more transparent, with fixed-rate markup and transparent labor fees. Mark's model adds a 15% markup on all products along with a flat 5 dollar labor and 3 dollar shipping fees. Though, patients pay out of pocket, the savings on purchasing generic drugs through the website when compared to purchasing through insurance has attracted over 400,000 account holders.
According to the paper published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Medicare's prescription drug program could have saved billions of dollars annually if it had purchased purchased 77 of 89 different prescription medicines from Mark Cuban's online pharmacy. According to the Harvard Medical School researchers, this would have saved Medicare approximately $3.6 billion in 2020 alone.
The federal agency currently purchases the required prescription drugs by navigating through a complex web of pharmacies and private medical insurers. The discrepancies found highlight the severe lack of efficiency in pharmaceutical supply chains, and the result is inefficient use of tax dollars.
Mark's transparent model gives patients an idea of what exactly they are paying for, the cost of ingredients and manufacturing. With sky rocketing drug prices in the U.S, affordable health care is a serious issue. Hopefully, Cost Plus Drug's will inspire more transparency within the pharmaceutical industry.
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