A startup co-founded by billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry is shipping its first drugs to two hospitals in need.
Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company is shipping the first batch of allergy drug epinephrine and blood pressure drug norepinephrine to 10 hospitals in Texas and Pennsylvania starting Wednesday, Bloomberg reports. It was reported.
Both drugs are facing national shortages, and Cost Plus began manufacturing them at its Dallas facility last month, according to Bloomberg. As of this writing, epinephrine injections are currently in short supply, according to the FDA’s Drug Shortage Database.
Mark Cuban. Photo credit: Bing Guan/Bloomberg, Getty Images
Cost Plus, which Cuban co-founded with radiologist Alex Osimyansky, was founded in January 2022 and currently delivers more than 2,300 prescription drugs through its online pharmacy.
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The startup has an ambitious mission to sell medicines safely and at the lowest possible prices, and strives to achieve that with transparent pricing. All drugs sold by the company are priced the same way, according to a letter Cuban wrote on the startup’s website. Cost-plus takes the base price you have to pay for a drug and increases that price by 15%, then adds on. The actual cost charged by the pharmacy to prepare the drug.
So, for example, a ringworm medication like albendazole would cost about $113, according to Drugs.com, but the letter says the cost-plus pricing method would cost customers $35. Become. Cuban wrote that the cost the startup had to pay for the drug was $26.08.
“Many people spend exorbitant amounts of money every month just to stay healthy,” Cuban wrote. “Americans shouldn’t have to suffer, or worse, because they can’t afford basic prescription drugs.”
Cost Plus also announced Tuesday that it is partnering with Price.com to integrate its drug prices into Price.com’s AI comparison tools.
Customers using Cost Plus can currently pick up their prescriptions at 5,000 partner pharmacies nationwide. last month or select As of last July, you can pick it up at 2,000 Kroger grocery stores.
Amazon Pharmacy is another direct-to-consumer online pharmacy platform that recently announced same-day delivery service in New York City and Los Angeles and plans to expand to more than 10 cities by the end of 2024.
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