Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. has the potential to save some patients $1.29 billion a year, according to a study led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers that evaluated 2020 Medicare Part D expenses for the nine most popular urological drugs.
The online pharmacy opened about a year ago, but if Medicare recipients had the option to pay Cost Plus Drug's prices in 2020, some prostate cancer treatments and bladder drugs would have been between 48.7 percent and 99.2 percent cheaper, the Nashville, Tenn.-based medical center said in a Feb. 9 post.
With these reduced prices, taxpayers would save $1.29 billion each year, the researchers found. The prostate cancer drug abiraterone would have been $656 million less expensive for Medicare spending, and it was 52 percent of the potential savings for urological drugs for 30-day and 90-day prescription models, according to the study.
"The impact of this could be astronomical across all cancers," lead author Ruchika Talwar, MD, a urologic oncology fellow at VUMC, said in the post. "Any sort of oral, generic drug available through Mark Cuban's company can be a lot cheaper for many patients, not just Medicare patients, through this program."