Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company Partners with OncoPower

Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (MCCPDC) has announced a partnership with cancer care support company OncoPower to offer prescription drugs at a decreased cost. The collaboration aims to build on OncoPower’s cancer care support with the launch of a Medication Savings Suite, which will leverage Cost Plus Drugs competitive pricing on generic medication. This will seamlessly allow the cancer patients that use OncoPower to look up pricing and order less expensive medications. 

Why It's Notable:

• The Medication Savings Suite integrates with OncoPower’s Pill Reminder tool, creating a free, end-to-end experience for the patient that improves treatment adherence, providing cost transparency, engaging the patient at home, and opening up affordable access to supportive care for every cancer patient.
  
  

• The partnership also creates an additional channel for Cost Plus Drugs to offer its low-cost generic medications directly to a community of cancer patients, a patient population that often struggles with taking many different medicines.

Industry Implications:

• In 2022, Americans paid $460 billion for prescription drugs, accounting for 16.7% of all healthcare expenditures, while the cost of new cancer drugs rose by 53% since 2017. By offering drugs like Imatinib (a generic leukaemia treatment) for $47 per month (versus costs ranging between $51 and $10,624 charged by other retailers), MCCPDC can make medicines more affordable and accessible for cancer patients, especially for those who are uninsured or underinsured.
  
  

• While Amazon has upped the ante with the launch of RxPass, an unlimited prescription service for Amazon Prime members, offering generic drugs for a flat fee of $5 per month, their list only includes 50 or so generic drugs. But the prerequisite to having a $139 per year Amazon Prime account restricts the offering to many patients. And important to note that the pass is currently off-limits to customers in a handful of states and those with Medicare and Medicaid. In contrast, MCCPDC offers more than 350 generic drugs at discounted prices and plans to add brand-name drugs to the company’s portfolio of products. And unlike Amazon, there are no major restrictions on who can use it and no membership is required.