Select Health, a subsidiary of Intermountain Healthcare, and its pharmacy benefit manager Scripius are teaming up with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company to offer its members access to more affordable drugs.
The goal of the partnership is to help consumers understand the true cost of their prescriptions and get the best pricing.
“At Select Health, our mission is to help our members live the healthiest lives possible. This agreement helps fulfill our mission by making healthcare more affordable to the communities that we serve,” Rob Hitchcock, Select Health president and CEO, said in a press release. “We are enabling our members to have access to more affordable healthcare by assisting them in finding optimal drug prices.”
Select Health members will have access to more than 1,000 prescription products, including those for high blood pressure, certain cancers, dementia, asthma, diabetes and more. Their prices may potentially be lower than at traditional pharmacy locations, according to a press release.
Select Health is a nonprofit health plan serving more than 1 million members across the Mountain West. Scripius, its PBM, aims to provide price clarity for plan sponsors and members and serve as an alternative to the big three PBMs.
“As a practicing physician I saw first-hand the danger of patients not taking their medications because they couldn't afford them,” Alex Oshmyansky, CEO of Cost Plus Drugs, said in the announcement. “We are excited to now be working with Select Health and PBMs like Scripius to further reduce the cost to patients, and to keep the patient record complete from both a clinical and financial perspective.”
Cost Plus Drugs, launched in January 2021 to offer low-cost rivals to overpriced generic drugs, was trendy from the start. It rolled out its online pharmacy at the start of 2022 with the goal of bypassing middlemen and markups and reflecting actual manufacturer prices plus a flat fee. It has partnered with PBMs, self-insured employers, pharmacy navigation startups and more.