How Discount Cards Work: A Primer on GoodRx and Its Competitors (rerun)

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for tomorrow’s live video webinar: PBMs and the Battle Over Patient Support Funds: Accumulators, Maximizers, and Alternative Funding.

Click here to see the original post from May 2023.

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In my March video webinar, I explored how the rapid expansion of patient-paid prescriptions—via cash-pay pharmacies and discount card vendors—is transforming the prescription market.

Below, I follow the dollar when a patient uses a discount card to pay for a generic drug prescription.

As you’ll see, a discount card can save money for consumers by leveraging several quirks of U.S. retail pharmacy pricing. Such cards also enable novel profit streams for both pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and the card vendors themselves.

For a deep dive into patient-paid prescriptions, see Sections 4.3. and 12.4.3. of our 2023 Economic Report on U.S. Pharmacies and Pharmacy Benefit Managers.

Click here if you can’t see the video below.

If this clip whets your appetite for more, register to watch a replay of the full 90 minute Discount Cards, Cost-Plus Pharmacies, and PBMs: Trends, Controversies, and Outlook video webinar.