*Their 95% advertised savings is misleading. With a company-reported $165 million of venture capital funding, I think Blink Health can afford to fix this flaw. Their members are paying the price alright. When I asked Blink Health how they are different from a discount drug card they said, unlike a discount drug card, their prices are guaranteed so the member pays the advertised price. She said when she went to the pharmacy and they would ‘run the code’ from the coupon and said it wasn’t real. The NBC News segment showed the woman searching for coupons online.
I'm not saying its members are paying more every time but moving the payment collection from the pharmacy to their website removes the lower-of logic from the process.
Unlike the aforementioned cards, ‘lower-of’ pricing does not happen automatically during adjudication so the member needs to rely on the pharmacist to tell them, which is exactly the scenario I recommend avoiding on my blog.īlink Health’s lack of lower-of pricing isn’t just limited to the $4 generics. A refund? That’s only IF the member knew they paid too much! When I spoke to Blink Health about a scenario like this they said the member would need to call their customer service number and ask for a refund. That’s over 300% more than Walmart’s cash price. In this example, Blink Health just charged their member $12.83 more than if the member had not used their service at all. This is the “lowest price guarantee” you lose when using Blink Health or GoodRx. In this scenario, these 2 companies will not earn a fee from the PBM because their cards did not produce a savings over the pharmacy’s deeply discounted cash price of $4. This happens automatically when the pharmacy sends the claim for adjudication to the PBM. Using EasyDrugCard or Familywize, because they use ‘lower-of” pricing, the user will only pay the lower-of price of $4 regardless of their advertised price. On it, a 30-day supply (30 pills) of Allopurinol 300mg tablets cost just $4.īlink Health’s price for the exact same drug/strength/quantity is $16.83, the GoodRx price (the lowest price was Walgreens which does not accept Blink Health) is $10.35. The members pre-pay Blink so, even if the pharmacy’s cash price is lower than the Blink price, the members have already paid the Blink price regardless. Blink Health is costing its members more money because they collect payment online before members go to the pharmacy instead of at the pharmacy thus cutting out the opportunity of a lower pharmacy cash price during adjudication.įor example, Walmart publishes a list of $4 generics. Since Blink collects the payment from the member on their website, the members have a $0 copay when they pick up the drugs. Blink Health has designed this protective feature out of its business model. Lower-of pricing compares the drug card's discounted price you expect to pay with the pharmacy’s cash price so you only pay the lower of the two. Unlike the others, Blink removes the ‘lower-of’ pricing methodology when processing the claim at the pharmacy. Blink uses MedImpact.īlink is little more than another drug card with a twist in the payment model – but that twist has the potential of costing their members more money than the pharmacy’s cash price. They all use different PBMs so their prices vary. So, what gives with Blink Health?Īfter checking prices at, , and, I soon realized Blink’s prices were not always lower than the others. You can’t go to Ford or Chevrolet directly to buy a car nor can you go to Pfizer or Novartis for drugs. How on earth do they negotiate prices from all the generic manufacturers for 1500 drugs and how does their payment model work? Like automobiles, consumers don’t buy medications from manufactures. Of course, the segment showed the woman’s $422 monthly cost shrink down to just $77 by using Blink Health and ended with her “saving time and money and enjoying life’s precious moments” (with her grand kids). For me, this broke with the traditional model discount drug card companies like GoodRx, EasyDrugCard, and Familywize use to provide users discounts on drugs at local pharmacies. The reporter then said, “ Blink goes straight to the drug maker so you find your price, pay online, print off your receipt to take to your pharmacy.” Again, I was fascinated by a new approach to buying medications. This explanation cuts out the claim processor, the PBM. This is where things went off the rail because that is NOT how pharmacy prescription claims are processed. Prices are based on what kind of insurance you have”.
“Normally your doctor writes a prescription, you go to your insurance company, and the insurance company goes to the drug maker.