In 2018, Alexander Oshmyansky contacted Mark Cuban to invest in his vision of a retail pharmacy that wouldn’t bankrupt people in dire need of medication.
In 2022, the CostPlus Drug Company started trading and you can now buy your prescription medicine at a great discount. In the case of a 30 count supply of 400mg Imatinib, you will pay US $39 whilst the retail price at other companies is $9,657.30. Yes, that’s a whopping saving of $9,618.30.
This information and prices are taken directly from the CostPlus Drug Company website. If you don’t believe that a saving this large is possible, then please go and check the last prescription you had to pay for and compare it to the price on on the CostPlus website.
How did that work out? Would you have saved going to this new company?
I think you would have. I even think that you would have saved a lot. Additionally, you still can order contraception medication, Plan B and medication deemed abortifacient even though you may be using them for an unrelated matter such as autoimmune disease.
So how good is that?
The good news doesn’t stop there. The company produces the medication locally and thereby provides jobs. They are even setting up a factory to provide additional medications currently not available via their website yet.
Why is this success so hard to believe?
Well, for one, public companies in the US are legally obliged to create the largest possible profit for their shareholders. If a company is found to make a profit but less than they could have, then the senior management team could still be personally liable for damages due to a reduced profit. How crazy is that!
This is where CostPlusDrugs is slightly different. It is registered as a Public Benefit Corporation. It still is a “for profit” company and should turn a profit along the way. However, profit is not the only legal driver. It is allowed to “include positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals” [Wikipedia]
Let’s take a step back and think about this statement for a moment.
Currently, the vast majority of companies are for-profit companies and their only legal goal is to maximize profits for shareholders.
Let this really sink in.
It is not the customer, not the employee, not the community, not the environment and not even the country which should benefit. ONLY shareholders ought to benefit.
I call bullshit on this system.
Public benefit corporations are the future and if I had anything to say, I would turn all for-profit companies into public benefit corporations and make them include their impact on the wider community as their legally obliged goal. That’s the only way we will get to a better place.
Let’s make CostPlus the future!