Hello, Dr. Keith Smith with you on behalf of the Free Market Medical Association. Thank you for joining me. We are continuing our unraveling of the secrets or big lies told by Big Pharma with our expert Chad Schmidt.

You go into a big national chain pharmacy with a script in your hand that your doctor has given you. Rather than fill it with what the doctor has written on the script, the pharmacy recommends what and why Chad?

Chad: Generics. Generics, generics, generics and they are really good for planned savings. It’s a great, aligned incentive with the employers and with the employees and the copays are usually lower. What is not necessarily disclosed by the big-box chains, is that they make a giant amount of money on generics.

Keith: So, if it’s a $30 prescription the big-box pharmacy is making more money on that, than if it is maybe a $300 prescription that is brand name?

Chad: From a percentage? Yes.

Keith: Wow, I think most people that are watching this may have to watch this one again just like the others to understand that the big-box pharmacy makes more money on the cheaper drug than on the expensive one. What other aspects of getting this script filled can we reveal to the public?

Chad: A game that continues to be played by the black-hats is, if someone goes to the pharmacy to fill their prescription their plan design says generics are $10. Now, for a lot of those drugs, it may be less than $10 in cost, but they are still being asked to pay that $10. That money, the difference between what’s paid and what the drug actually costs, goes back to the pharmacy benefit manager.

Keith: So I pay my $10 copay and I get the drug, but I could have paid $4 in cash and received the entire drug. The difference between the $10 and the $4 goes back to the people who are trying to manage which drug I select?

Chad: Correct.

Keith: Ok, if this doesn’t sound like lies that you believe or that you have been told, certainly this is information that has not been disclosed to you. I don’t know of anybody that has made a video like this, where these kinds of issues have been discussed. I would encourage all of you who are watching this to watch the brilliant talk given by my friend Chad Schmidt at last year’s annual conference.

Thank you, we’ll see you next time.