This week a new study from Harvard Medical School researchers estimated that Medicare could save almost $4bn a year were it to purchase drugs and prescriptions from Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company instead of the complex supply chain of private brokers and pharmacies that it currently sources from.
Billionaire Mark Cuban launched the Cost Plus Drug Company in January this year, selling generic prescriptions direct to consumers with a fixed pricing structure of a 15% mark-up, a $3 dispensing fee and a $5 shipping fee, in a bid to disrupt the $350bn+ a year prescription-drug industry.
America #1
The study showed that in some specific cases Medicare was being charged 800%+ more than what they could pay if they had gone direct or via Cuban's new company. That's no surprise to anyone familiar with the wider data on the US pharmaceutical industry — the latest data from the OECD (charted above) shows that the US spends more per person on pharmaceutical expenditures than any other OECD member.
