Disrupting the Pharmacy (Blink Health)

Discussing low cost drug purchasing.

team of Internet entrepreneurs in downtown Manhattan wants to revolutionize how Americans get prescription drugs. Their company, Blink Health, has a crazy idea: let customers shop for the best deal.

In any other industry, of course, this would not be revolutionary, but it’s a foreign concept at the pharmacy counter and a distasteful prospect to the businesses now shielded from marketplace competition. Politicians and activists routinely decry the resulting high prices, but their preferred solution is to impose price controls that would stifle the development of new drugs. Democrats—joined, at times, by President Trump—argue that government control is necessary because the free-market system has failed patients. But the real problem with prescription drugs, as with the rest of the health-care system, is that the free market hasn’t been tried.

A functioning market requires price signals to provide consumer guidance; but at the pharmacy, neither the buyer nor the seller knows what the price is. In choosing among drugs to prescribe, your doctor doesn’t know how much each will cost you or your insurance company. You can’t find out what you’ll pay until after you’ve chosen a pharmacy to handle the prescription. The pharmacist must contact the insurance company to find out how much to charge you—and even then, he doesn’t know whether the transaction will be profitable.

All that information is available only to the middlemen, who have exploited the system’s secrecy and complexity to profit at the expense of patients, local pharmacists, drug manufacturers, and taxpayers. While politicians denounce the supposed power of Big Pharma, the pharmaceutical manufacturers are a puny, disorganized force compared with the companies that control the pricing and availability of drugs—Big Pharmacy, as the executives at Blink Health call these middlemen. They’re the ones who decide whether your insurance will cover a drug, how much you’ll pay for it at the counter, and how much of that payment the drugstore will keep.

Big Pharmacy is essentially an oligopoly dominated by several businesses that administer the drug benefits provided to most Americans by health-insurance plans. By negotiating with drug manufacturers on behalf of the insurers, these companies set the terms for most prescriptions, and they’ve gained further leverage through what economists call vertical integration: merging or forming partnerships with insurers, wholesale distributors, and chain pharmacies. In other industries, big-box chains use economies of scale to undersell small stores, but CVS and Walgreens get away with charging higher prices than local drugstores because they’re part of the oligopoly.

A new drug option.

Unsure how the Healthcare-Insurance-Industrial Complex will respond.

Having a medicare advantage policy, I can buy my pills where ever i want.

After carefully shopping around at various local providers including CVS and Walmart , I discovered the lowest cost was through the Humana On Line Pharmacy.

Additionally, they track refills and if desired, remind me of the time for a refill and of the fact all the refills have been used. It will be interesting to see how this encounter of giants will turn out

Amazon has gone into the business as PillPack.

A functioning market requires price signals to provide consumer guidance; but at the pharmacy, neither the buyer nor the seller knows what the price is. In choosing among drugs to prescribe, your doctor doesn’t know how much each will cost you or your insurance company. You can’t find out what you’ll pay until after you’ve chosen a pharmacy to handle the prescription. The pharmacist must contact the insurance company to find out how much to charge you—and even then, he doesn’t know whether the transaction will be profitable.

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Insurance companies promote this corruption because they make more money when prices are higher.

To find prices, all you have to do is go to the drugstore and ask

this has just changed

My eye drops are $450 retail, $60 copay on my insurance at Costco, and $30 from Blink. Oh, and Blink puts them on my porch via UPS, and phones me when it’s time for a refill.

Blink is awesome.

Yes, Blink is great. I have used them for some generics. Very inexpensive when you can wait for them to be shipped to your home. A bit more expensive if want to pick them up a local pharmacy that is in co-operation with Blink.

I checked a couple of drugs on their web site. Pricing is no better than using GoodRX.

In addition, chain stores are getting into the membership thing. Competition is working its way into the system. Not there yet, but it is getting better.

Now that it has started happening, it will progress unless big pharma can get some legislation passed to inhibit this new competition.

To find prices, all you have to do is go to the drugstore and ask

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This article is about comparative pricing between providers.

Yes, but one can compartative shop by checking various stores

Where we are Limited as hubby is Retired Navy SCPO 20 yrs, Medicare is our Primary, with Tricare Life as Secondary. We are free to chose our docs. Not where scripts are filled. They prefer we fill at the Base Pharmacy or Express Scripts, leaving only ER scripts like Antibiotics to Private Pharmacies. They will BALK at Antibiotics for SIBO though, that has to be filled at the Base Pharmacy. 14 day supply retails at $1,550. I had to take 3 rounds of it last year.

Every time SS or Military Pension gets a COLA raise Co-pays go up to exceed the Raise so you end up with a few bucks in your wallet the rest goes to Medicare or Tricare Co-pays. They push generics, some drugs don’t have generics. Only a uninformed patient takes the Generic hypothyroid med, it’s 30% LESS hormone than the Name Brand Synthroid and comes with a lot of side effects. Good ENDO’s won’t script it.

Prescribed a high cost drug for Nonalcoholic cirrhosis . The cost is horrendous. Was suggested to check in Canada for the drug. Keeping track of the suppliers, but so far the drug is doing what it is supposed to do. A drug meant to keep me alive should not cost so much. $2200 a month, is now $1 a pill.

From the article:

You can’t find out what you’ll pay until after you’ve chosen a pharmacy to handle the prescription. The pharmacist must contact the insurance company to find out how much to charge you—and even then, he doesn’t know whether the transaction will be profitable.