Key takeaways:
Since its founding, GoodRx has helped consumers save over $65 billion on brand-name and prescription medications (relative to pharmacies’ usual and customary, or retail, prices).
By saving people money on their medications, GoodRx helps users continue taking their medications as prescribed, which leads to better health outcomes and lower costs to the healthcare system. The savings also free up funds that they can use on other basic necessities.
In addition to savings, GoodRx provides high-quality, expert-reviewed health information that makes healthcare easier to understand.
In 2021, we published our first report on the GoodRx Effect. In it, we outlined the ways in which GoodRx had improved social welfare by helping people access affordable medication.
Since then, legislators and industry leaders have recognized the need for change in the prescription medication space. Policies like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Hospital Price Transparency Rule aimed to make prices easier to understand and reduce out-of-pocket costs. But these initiatives have faced challenges in making a meaningful impact on out-of-pocket costs, and affordable healthcare is still out of reach for many people.
Meanwhile, companies have seen the cost of their health insurance plans rise, with projected increases of 8.5% in 2024 — a rate set to outpace wage growth. The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency also made healthcare more expensive for some of the most vulnerable, including the 11 million and counting who have been disenrolled from Medicaid.
In addition, 41% of people with or without insurance who were taking medication for an ongoing condition reported an increase in their prescription medication costs in 2023. And nearly 36% reported some difficulty affording their medications.
Since 2011, GoodRx has worked to reduce these high healthcare costs. To date, we have helped consumers save over $65 billion on brand-name and generic prescription medications, relative to pharmacies’ usual and customary (or retail) prices.
We’ve been able to accomplish this through our relationships with healthcare providers, pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers, and drug manufacturers.
But GoodRx’s impact goes beyond consumers’ pocketbooks. By saving people money, GoodRx also benefits people’s health, helping users stick to their medication regimens and achieve better health outcomes. We’re building a bridge to healthcare for our users, by making it more efficient, easier to use, and easier to understand.
In our updated paper, we look at how The GoodRx Effect has continued to evolve since our founding to positively shape healthcare and well-being.
Our six main impacts
In the report, we walk through the six main impacts GoodRx has had on healthcare and well-being:
Helping Americans, with or without insurance, save on their generic and brand prescription medications: Last year, GoodRx users saved an average of 82% on retail prices for prescription medications.* To date, we have helped consumers save over $65 billion off retail prices on their prescriptions.** Through partnerships with drug manufacturers, GoodRx also helps users access the lowest price for their brand medications. For example, GoodRx has helped people save up to 88% off the average commercial insurance copay for popular brand medications treating diabetes.
Improving medication adherence: By lowering out-of-pocket costs for generic and brand medications, GoodRx has helped users obtain at least 184 million prescriptions they otherwise may not have been able to afford. And, in a survey of people who used GoodRx to save on their brand medications, we found that 61% would have had to skip or delay filling their prescription without GoodRx.
Improving health outcomes: Better medication adherence thanks to GoodRx also means better health outcomes. By helping users afford their prescriptions, GoodRx has directly contributed to the prevention of at least 590,000 emergency room visits and 336,000 hospitalizations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), depression, diabetes, and major adverse cardiovascular events like heart attack and stroke.
Helping free up funds for other necessities: By reducing the burden of medication expenses, GoodRx helps people invest in other aspects of their life, like their health, housing, education, and overall well-being.
Improving efficiency in the healthcare system: By improving medication adherence, GoodRx has helped save the healthcare system over $5 billion in preventable ER visits and hospitalizations, translating to at least $145 million in out-of-pocket savings for our users. GoodRx has also pioneered two new solutions to improve efficiency across the healthcare system and reduce administrative burden: integrated GoodRx savings with insurance and real-time benefit check for healthcare providers.
Making healthcare easier to use and understand: By providing people with transparent prices, streamlined and accessible savings, and relevant, high-quality health information, GoodRx helps make it easier for everyone to use and understand healthcare.
Read our full white paper, “The GoodRx Effect: How GoodRx Is Changing the Economics of Healthcare.”
Read our previous GoodRx Effect report here.
* All estimates referencing last year and 2023 are calculated for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2023.
** All estimates to date and since GoodRx’s founding are calculated as of September 30, 2023.
Co-contributors: Diane Li, BA, Jeroen van Meijgaard, PhD, Lauren Chase, BS, Sasha Guttentag, PhD, Tori Marsh, MPH, Trinidad Cisneros, PhD
Forward-looking statements
This report contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements contained in this report that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding consumer savings; the benefits of our offerings to consumers, the U.S. healthcare system, and GoodRx; and GoodRx’s plans, expectations, and objectives. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, risks relating to our ability to achieve broad market education and change consumer purchasing habits, changes in medication pricing and pricing structures, our reliance on a limited number of industry participants, the competitive nature of our industry, risks related to government regulation of the internet, e-commerce, consumer data and privacy, information technology and cyber-security and the important factors discussed in the section entitled “Risk Factors” in GoodRx’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, as updated by our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2023, and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements made in this report. Any such forward-looking statements represent management’s estimates as of the date of this report. While we may elect to update such forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we disclaim any obligation to do so, even if subsequent events cause our views to change.
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