Don’t rely on Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs for the lowest prices

I promoted Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs a while back as a way to get low-cost generics. As it turns out, Darius Tahir reports for Kaiser Health News that Cost Plus Drugs does not always offer the lowest prices. Bottom line, if you have Medicare Part D, you should shop around if you want the lowest prices on your drugs.

Cost Plus Drugs now offers more than 1,000 prescription drugs. But, it does not manufacture them. So, your local pharmacy could offer the drugs you need at lower prices. You can also check PharmacyChecker.com for low-cost drugs around the world.

Cost Plus Pharmacy negotiates prices. And, then it is charging you a 15 percent markup from the manufacturer’s price, plus $3.00 for labor for each medicine and then a flat $5 fee to ship as many drugs as you order.

In a cost comparison of drugs beginning with the letter A, Kaiser Health News (KHN) found Cost Plus Pharmacy did not offer the lowest drug prices for residents of Washington DC most of the time. But, sometimes it offered massive savings. One expensive drug, aprepitant, an anti-nausea medicine, was nearly $1,000 less through Cost Plus Drugs than through GoodRx, $4,815.30 v. $5,740.

Cost Plus Drugs is really taking out a lot of the PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Manager) and pharmacy markups, since it replaces the PBM as the middleman. Amazon and Walmart are also offering a bunch of low-cost generic drugs.

Cost Plus Drugs is not a pharmacy but uses Truepill, a mail-order pharmacy.

Bottom line, you Part D drug coverage should offer you some savings on some drugs, particularly brand-name drugs. But, don’t count on it to give you the lowest out-of-pocket costs. The copays can be higher than the total cost of your drugs through Costco or Cost Plus Drugs, at least for now.

The good news, if you take a lot of drugs, is that beginning in 2026, you will not pay more than $2,000 in total for your prescription drugs on formulary through your Part D drug plan. That is one of the big benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022.

Here’s more from Just Care:

• Case study: Costco saves one couple hundreds of dollars over Medicare Part D
• 2023: Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage and costs
• Will Rx provisions in the IRA disappoint?
• Six tips for keeping your drug costs down if you have Medicare
• Millions safely import low-cost drugs from abroad