Martin is just trolling to get traffic to his newly launched Substack.

On 2022-04-02, I paid $32 to Amazon Pharmacy for a 90 count of Bupropion XL 300mg.

Tonight, I'm ordering a refill of my prescription from Mark Cuban's CostPlus Drug Company, for the same Bupropion XL 300mg, but 180 count, for $19.20 + $5 shipping = $24.20.

Amazon Pharmacy cost me $0.355/pill. Mark Cuban's CostPlus Drug Company will cost me $0.135/pill. That's 2.6x cheaper.

For comparison, using GoodRx, the cheapest pharmacy near me is Acme Markets Pharmacy who is selling the 90 count of 300mg for $22.39, which is $0.249/pill, cheaper than Amazon Pharmacy, but more expensive than MCCPDC.

In the end, I'm saving $40-50/year on this prescription through MCCPDC - is this life changing? Thankfully, no.

But, to claim that MCCPDC isn't cheaper than the prevailing alternative purchasing options? Sorry, clickbait troll.

“… according to convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli.”

What pharma-bro doesn't touch on is insurance doesn't always cover these drugs. There are some real cost savings, here, and really, you should shop around, anyway. Fair enough on the anti-parasitic drug, but he also noted he considered acquiring it, and we've seen what he has done with acquired drugs in the past.

I have to go through a fight (via prior auth requests for drugs I was already on, sometimes taking weeks, causing loss of refills in the process) at least a couple of times a year over medication coverage.

I see nothing bad about what Mark Cuban's pharmacy is doing. If anything, it should put some pressure out there on the prescription drug market.

Looking at a few prescriptions, more common use ones such as acid reflux medication, anti-depressants, etc, CostPlus Pharmacy is definitely not always the cheapest option.

Take for example Sertraline, an anti-depressant/anxiety medication.

Cost Plus Pharmacy: https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/sertraline-100mg-table...

GoodRX: https://www.goodrx.com/zoloft

At face value, CPP seems cheaper until you realize they don't include the shipping in their main shown price.

There are other cases like nexium where they just straight up aren't the cheapest option even before shipping:

https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/esomeprazole-40mg-caps...

https://www.goodrx.com/nexium

Honestly I think any article whose end goal is to actually help people find cheap RX where they either don't have insurance or their insurance charges an insane co-pay for a prescription should be recommending they shop around to see what is cheapest.

Obviously this is a very small sample size and there could easily be cases where CPP is more useful (as Martin himself points out, it actually does make Imatinib cheaper), but this just further proves the fact that shopping around in this case is important

Honestly this would be less of an issue if CostPlus didn't claim it had the 'lowest possible prices' and the news coverage for CostPlus wasn't basically giving that impression too.

[Edit: Clean up post formatting]

In the end, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that this will undoubtedly help some people have better accessibility to their medicine.

In a medical group of mine (Facebook), somebody posted about needing help with their medicine (Desmopressin, nasal) price - they were paying $400 a month, & their pharmacy/insurance had repeatedly told them that was the price they had to pay & to suck it up. These were middle class people too, but with children, that’s still a chunk of money.

I do not know why - nor does it doesn’t matter - she was completely unaware that it was available on Amazon for $50/mo. & a legitimate mail order Indian pharmacy for $25/mo. This is not your average HN user. This is your average American, or given the fact they are middle class, maybe a bit above average. They were unaware of already existing options, that are literally 1/8th of the price of what they’d been dealing with for years now.

Mark Cubans pharmacy will undoubtedly be advertised & spread through word of mouth as an option that is indeed cheaper or more accessible than what many people, despite it being 2022 & having the world of information at our fingertips, are currently using.