[delbel]

My doctor brought in his laptop and showed me this site. I was completely floored that these are cheaper then my co-pay. I now recommend this to everyone. My neighbor who is low income retired senior, was paying more with all these government subsidized prices, then Safeway. He was absolutely livid he could get a $15 that cost him $280. At this point I realized that the entire insurance scheme is a scam. The co-pay is above what the prices you can find on GoodRx. You end up paying MORE with the insurance co-pay then you would if you were to just shop around. This should be felony fraud! From speaking with my friends, nobody knew about GoodRx so I bet a majority of medicine is overpaid with "insurance" -- this should be headlines everywhere.

[maxerickson]

GoodRx is a pharmacy benefit manager, most insurance companies use a pharmacy benefit manager. What they do is negotiate prices for some certain set of drugs. So 2 insurance companies might have 2 different prices than GoodRx and each of the 3 will offer a slightly different set of drugs.

When you use insurance and pay the co-pay, that counts against your out of pocket maximum on the plan. Prescriptions bought with GoodRx don't.

The insurance isn't doing a great job when they charge a co-pay that is larger than the price GoodRx has negotiated, but it isn't evidence of a scam.

[pramttl]

GoodRx is not a Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) actually. A PBM negotiates prices with pharmacies to include them in their network, GoodRx does not do that to my knowledge. Instead, GoodRx offers a service that allows users to compare different coupon and membership prices so that people can chose the best available price/pharmacy combination.

[maxerickson]

They do it by taking up the role of a PBM. This is for some other discounter, but you get the idea, they process the prescription using GoodRx's system:

https://www.discountdrugnetwork.com/what-rx-bin-and-group-nu...