Relentless Health Value

This show was one of the most popular episodes in the past 12 months. So, here it is again for your listening pleasure. Mostly this whole episode is about the so-called “Big Three” PBMs that provide between the three of them pharmacy benefit services for 95% of insured Americans. PBM stands for pharmacy benefit manager, and the Big Three PBMs being ESI, otherwise known as Express Scripts; OptumRx, which is a part (a big profitable part) of UnitedHealth Group; and then also CVS. Yes, CVS is not just for your retail pharmacy needs; they are also a huge pharmacy benefit manager. Now, we get to the GoodRx part of our story. If you don’t know how GoodRx works, I would strongly encourage you to go back and listen to “An Expert Explains” with Dr. Ge Bai from last year (AEE13). That said, here’s the super short semi-reductive version to keep us all level set here. If you already know how GoodRx works, you can skip forward about four minutes. So, first of all, let’s all understand that GoodRx’s business model only exi