91 – Save Big on Ozempic ($25) and More w/ Miriam Paramore’s RxUtility!

Marcus: 0:00

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Vic: 0:16

Okay, this is Health Further recording at the Nashville Healthcare Sessions with Miriam Perrymore. Miriam, thanks for doing this. Hi

Miriam Paramore: 0:24

Vic, it's so good to see you. It's great to see you. Nice to be doing this in this tech savvy podcasting

Vic: 0:30

booth. Yes, we have done podcasts before, but You and I have, and I've done lots of other podcasts. I've never done it in this fishbowl kind of environment. I

Miriam Paramore: 0:39

know it feels kind of good to be in here and, you know, a little secret. Yes.

Vic: 0:44

People are walking by and waving and hopefully listening to the podcast. So, um, I'm excited to dive in with this. So you have been working on RX utility, which we're going to get into the whole point of the podcast, but. Before we start, maybe give the audience a little bit of your background. Yeah. Um, because you've come through healthcare for profit, uh, for a long time. Yeah. Around Nashville and, uh, back to the old, uh, MD on, all kinds of All those days. Maybe give like a three to five minute summary to help people with context of where you come from. And then I want to dig really into like the new adventure and really giving back.

Miriam Paramore: 1:21

Yeah, thank you. Um, yeah, so I have been in healthcare for four decades now. And you're

Vic: 1:28

only 35 years old. Exactly. So I don't know how that works. I know, it's

Miriam Paramore: 1:30

so hard. It's such a setup. But, um, All of that time was, uh, has been in tech. And my first job out of college was I was a programmer for HCA right here in Nashville. Um, we had things called mainframes back then, and languages like COBOL and assembler and things that no one would know, you know what they are. Uh, but it grew up in the industry. I got into management consulting, which sort of shifted me into, um, what do, computers do for business problems. And I found the business side more interesting. So I kind of continued to grow up. I became, uh, the CEO as a, of a subsidiary of Anthem when I lived in, uh, Indianapolis. And that did transaction processing for the Blue Cross Blue Shield franchises that they ran out of there and the Medicare. And it was primarily around claims, so eligibility and claims and payment. So Yeah. So

Vic: 2:22

back in the early days, always. Technology, big data, transaction processing, payments, from the, from the early days. From

Miriam Paramore: 2:32

the very early days. And so the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, it was very common for them to in source that capability. And then as the sort of clearinghouse, um, ecosystem evolved with MDON being one of the leaders there. Um. Um, the transaction processing started to get outsourced. So

Vic: 2:51

it became more efficient to outsource that and share that across many providers and payers.

Miriam Paramore: 2:56

So that multi sided network, which we would call it now, which we didn't call it then was, was what is the baseline of the RCM component of the health IT ecosystem now, but was the very first baseline. of digitizing what used to be on paper, claims, creating a standard for format and content, and then creating the privacy and security rules around which HIPAA was written and then high tech. So it was really the beginning of digitizing any kind of workflow in healthcare pre EHR. And of course, then EHRs came out and then you had clinical formats and et cetera. So my career has kind of grown up through that. And um, at this point after, um, being an executive on the MD on team and we took that public and then I left and I was about. 11 years ago, I've run another publicly traded company, which was a multi sided network, but it was between the life sciences industry and the healthcare service delivery industry, which is a really a key opportunity that RxUtility fits within, but hadn't really thought of it that way at the beginning. But, um, we talk a lot about interoperability in healthcare and the need for it. And of course there's all kinds of health IT nerdy news about that all the time, which we follow. Um, Um, but, but that is really inside the service delivery and payment ecosystem and the life sciences ecosystem is like, you know, sort of like Australia is to North America. It's like a totally different world, content, and there's no digital bridge between those two worlds. Uh, continents. So it's, it's interoperability on, on steroids or, you know, or, or squared, uh, problem. So what I learned about with, uh, my last, uh, day job being the president and chief strategy officer of a small cap NASDAQ stock called Optimize Rx was one bridge that was happening for messaging to providers within the EHR, uh, from pharma manufacturers. And so I learned about what we. All probably are familiar with in terms of coupons, and maybe you've seen some coupons for medications. Um, but you may not be really aware of kind of what that means. Um,

Vic: 5:02

Well, I see at the end of, you know, watching the NFL, watching any TV really these days, there'll be, there'll be drug ads on. Yeah. And at the end, they'll typically be a little tag on says if you have trouble affording your medications. Yeah. Yeah. Come see us here. But I've never actually used a coupon and before we started talking previous to this.

Miriam Paramore: 5:21

Yeah.

Vic: 5:21

I didn't really realize the extent to which coupons were available.

Miriam Paramore: 5:25

Yeah. And that's one of the things that I'm. And I'm fairly educated in healthcare. Yeah, you're an insider, right. So I was shocked seven years ago when I really learned about the scale. I knew they existed. And so pharmaceutical manufacturer coupons, what are they? They're just like if you were a Pampers coupon for diapers. Um, it's a branded. That's a brand of diapers, and the manufacturer gives those coupons out to consumers to, you know, incentivize them to, to buy, uh, to offset the price. So manufacturers do this for branded drugs. You know, are

Vic: 5:57

they required to do it, or it's just like with Pampers or anything else? They're not required. It's election. They can do what

Miriam Paramore: 6:02

they required to do it. What they do when, when the R& D cycle of life sciences creates a drug, and then they begin to bring it to market, they call that commercialization. That's commercialization. And inside the commercialization, um, process, one of the steps is called market access. And that involves, who are the providers that would need to prescribe this drug, and how do we educate them? And then who are the consumers that would likely take this drug, and how do we reach them? And so, part of that access is around information, but part of it's around affordability. And at that time, in commercialization, the manufacturer makes a decision, am I going to sponsor, a coupon program, and they set up a budget to fund these coupons. And so many of them do it, that there are 10 billion worth of savings available every single year for consumers to take advantage of through these coupons. Let me just

Vic: 6:57

pause to focus on that. Yeah. 10 billion. in coupons per year are available for U. S. I think it's you have a U. S. That's right. That's

Miriam Paramore: 7:05

U. S. Yes. Thank you. What percent are redeemed? Yeah, great question. Only about 20 percent which means we're leaving

Vic: 7:13

short for billion billion or eight billion billion on

Miriam Paramore: 7:16

the table. Right. And so I was fascinated with that because one of our solutions at Optimizer X was digitally communicating savings into the EHR, but we did it on such a small scale and we were one of the best in the industry that we might have 50 brands at a time. But in reality, nobody really knew like how many brands and so forth because no one had brought this information together. So I became very motivated when I became aware of the scale and then I began to understand the problems that there really only two problems and like so many things in life. It's awareness first, like what are, what are we talking about, it's awareness, and then it's distribution. So, digital distribution, neither of those things really exist around this story, or you would have known, because you're an insider and you do this all the time.

Vic: 8:04

Yeah, and I think anyone, including me, I would prefer to not pay the full price. If I can get a coupon digitally and easily, I would opt to do that. I think most people would.

Miriam Paramore: 8:16

Absolutely. And it, and so if we can put my, my mission, our mission as a company is to put every single dollar of that 10 billion of savings into the hands of consumers. Let's get it all out there. There are questions about, you know, who does this benefit? And, you know, it's got to let somebody down. I would say that, you know, these things. It is sort of a rising tide, um, scenario. There's not really kind of a loser. here because, uh, we all know affordability is a challenge. We know that 30 percent of people say they don't get their medications, pick them up because of cost. We know that there's abandonment, um, you know, after the first fill because of cost. Um, and we know that Financial toxicity is really a cause of, um, people not getting the care that they need. So this is one tool, that's why I call the business RX Utility. This is simply a tool to mobilize and democratize those savings so they can get out there to the consumers. Yeah, and I

Vic: 9:15

want to dive into exactly how, but before we do that. I, I think because it's voluntary by the companies, there really is no downside. They are electing to provide these coupons in order to help their branding or help it get, um, be more access to more patients. And you are bringing awareness to people and allowing consumers to use that more. But that seems like a win win all around. I mean, it's very positive.

Miriam Paramore: 9:45

I think so too. And it's one of these, it's a rare jewel. You and I have been in the healthcare industry for a long time and we've seen lots of initiatives try to Improve outcomes and lower cost and I don't know if you saw this last week. The commonwealth report came out

Marcus: 9:59

Yeah,

Miriam Paramore: 9:59

and the united states is last again against the

Vic: 10:03

20th year in a row of

Miriam Paramore: 10:04

the other 10 Used to be 11, but now it's 10 Um nations that are compared. We're the worst in outcomes and we're the worst in cost and it's not by a little bit It's by a lot everything else clusters here stuff's up here So it can be hard to feel motivated around making a positive change But when you find a little nugget of something like this, that as you said, this are already funded, these tools already exist. So if we can just tell people and make them aware and then get digital liquidity. to these things, then I believe they will flow easily through our health IT ecosystem to the provider and the consumer. And then we're really off to the races with those savings. So,

Vic: 10:45

so tell me the origin story of RX Utility. How did you conceive of it? And then how are you going to market to make this, Bring awareness and also make it easy for folks to collect these coupons and benefit from them.

Miriam Paramore: 11:00

Yeah. Thank you The origin story really when I left OptimizeRx after five years So I had this awareness that this great bucket of money was available that nobody was used But even I didn't know really how big it is So I started researching and I did probably six months of solid research, but in parallel with that I was doing A lot of private equity advising. I'm an operating advisor for Goldman Sachs. I was advising, you know, KKR, Sixth Street and others, and I was doing board work and I was, um, looking at a lot of portfolio companies, a lot of startups and, and seeing what people were trying to do to innovate and, and how people were putting money into what efforts. And then at the same time I was doing that, Vic, you know, this, that the whole market adjustment, Happened, meaning that companies were overvalued, were valued on growth, um, with no respect for profitability. Um, and then that all adjusted. Yeah. There,

Vic: 11:54

there were all the stimulus checks, all the stimulus that kind of flows through when money was cheap, the financial assets and, and made public stock and private assets very highly valued.

Miriam Paramore: 12:05

And so now we've had an adjustment and now we've

Vic: 12:07

had a Correct Yeah. Adjustment. Yeah. We've a correction, right? Yeah,

Miriam Paramore: 12:09

exactly. So I'm looking at all of these ways that people are trying to put capital to work to innovate health care and put tech to work to innovate health care, and I thought, gosh, you know, I want to do something that I believe will actually work versus all of these things that we've tried to do over the years, and I want to do something that's specific tech. And very close to the patient. So my motivation is this is a tool that exists. We don't have to go convince people to create these funds. They exist. We just need to close that awareness gap and that distribution gap. And I know how to do that. Cause I've built multi sided back to my, I've built multi sided networks, my whole career. So, uh,

Vic: 12:47

interesting thing is that. I, I think, you can correct me, as you, uh, become aware of the coupons and then get one plugged in related to your prescription and your pharmacy, that benefit will last for every fill. That's correct. For a year, or sometimes for longer than a year.

Miriam Paramore: 13:04

Yeah, they persist, which is a great thing. And when these are designed, you know, I mentioned the market access phase of commercialization, then. Yeah. Typically, the design of the coupon is around the therapeutic life of the drug. So, if you're supposed to take it for 12 months, it's going to last for 12 months. If you need to keep taking it, you're going to renew and it's going to keep on going. So, technically, these things get into the, um, pharmacy claim. and they act like the secondary payer. That's how they technically work. But we could, you know, kind of save that for a nerd, uh, call. But, um, once the consumer, you know, activates or gets, becomes aware and this thing gets in the system, it really does advantage them. Um, and we can, I've got some examples, you know, if you want to talk about.

Vic: 13:45

Let's start with kind of in general how you're going to market. So you are going to partner with other businesses, maybe

Miriam Paramore: 13:55

exactly

Vic: 13:55

maybe a health system or a Pharmacy benefit chain or I don't know if you have anything similar that you already have heard of, but large, large groups where they have many patients or members that they're in communication with and not go direct, at least at first, you're not going to go direct. Is that right? That's right. So people can't go to the AHRQ's utility website and just sign up. That's right. You have partners that they can sign up with.

Miriam Paramore: 14:20

That's right. Well, it's a little bit different. So it's, let me. Provide the nuance here. So it's just the name of RX utility is intentional because RX, everybody knows what that is. Utility makes you think of something that's in settings or it's a tool. It is, it is a tool. And who is it a tool for? So it's a tool designed to be used by the existing health IT ecosystem. So who are those people? Well, those are the people that at the, uh, point of treatment or even pre treatment, they're the people like aphresia that'll do your scheduling and then your check in. And when you're in the office, there's the EHR and within that, there's the prescribing module. When you check out, that patient engagement app might say, some of them do. My friend just recently had a, uh, appointment and had Athena's app said to her, you know, thanks for coming basically to the office and here's your script and don't forget to pick it up basically. Yeah.

Vic: 15:17

And no coupon,

Miriam Paramore: 15:19

no coupon there yet. But right there, if the script has a coupon, then Athena, if they had a, um, they subscribed to my file and it's an, it's a simple API interaction. Uh, they say, Hey, is there a coupon for this drug? And then if there is, then that, that's brought back. So I, you know, I've spent my whole career and I know so many people in health IT really well intentioned, great tech flows, the content, this is in, in, uh, you know, most simple terms, quote, just content. Okay. So just as they subscribe to the MediSpan file, which is a list of all the drugs they would subscribe to my file, which is a list of all of, the coupons. And whenever they interact with a human, whether this be pre treatment, treatment, post treatment, especially if you're in an MTM, medication therapy management environment, or chronic care management, you're always touching that person's medication record as part of that care management. We know that medication Non adherence is the number one cause of poor outcomes. So on the back end, let's say you didn't catch the coupon on the front end. That's okay. You could have that care management software also subscribe to the file and simply ping, you know, of the six or seven. Or 12 drugs that this chronically ill person takes. Is there a coupon for this one, this one, this one? And if there are, now we surface it and we get it flowing. And so, um, Yeah, so

Vic: 16:44

whether it is, um, a discharge or it's a case manager or a health coach, there's a lot of different interactions. This is a way to bring real dollar value to the patients and get them engaged in their health care taking their meds Yeah through offering them savings, which almost every demographic of patient will their ears will perk up for they like they like

Miriam Paramore: 17:09

Absolutely. I mean I use I still use keep I mean no one like would

Vic: 17:14

Yeah. Why would you

Miriam Paramore: 17:15

not? Why would you pay more? Yeah. Especially

Vic: 17:17

when I don't have to, it's not like I need to bring a pack of coupons. It gets put into my record at the pharmacy and then it just hits every time.

Miriam Paramore: 17:23

Yeah. The consumer really, we're trying to remove the barriers. Now there are some things when you, a lot of, most of the new drugs coming onto market now are specialty drugs and you know that and a lot of it are infused and there's a bunch of biosimilars and there's just a bunch of sort of complicated, um, expensive drugs coming to market. All of them. have coupons. But unlike some of the sort of more, I don't want to call them normal drugs, but sort of the more,

Vic: 17:51

the more off the shelf, pill in a bottle off

Miriam Paramore: 17:53

the shelf drug, these you have to quote enroll in. And so it requires some paperwork or, you know, some back and forth online. And a lot of, uh, companies that are in the hub processing part of the, you know, pharmacy value chain, they will help over the phone if, you know, someone needs that. So it's not as easy. as it just being instant, it is part of the time, but part of the time it requires this enrollment because there's an intentional hurdle there. But that doesn't dissuade me because the, the first phase of the business is distribution, right? Digital distribution, make it easy so that it pops up in all the health IT that's already there. So this is not an app. This is not something that is a new, uh, Yeah, it's like, it's

Vic: 18:40

not another tool to hang on my tool bed that's so heavy that I can't walk around. Right. It's an API call that would fit into other tools to make them more effective. Exactly. More patient facing.

Miriam Paramore: 18:50

More patient facing. So I can, I see this as something that drives up patient satisfaction scores, drives up medication adherence scores for the provider. Drives down

Vic: 18:59

cost, up affordability. Yeah.

Miriam Paramore: 19:01

So it seems to me that it is a. It was a little bit of a secret and we don't want it to be a secret anymore. We want to get it out there. And I really believe. Well, who is

Vic: 19:09

hiding it? I don't see who is hiding it, right? Just as more like it's complicated and it's hard to get the information out.

Miriam Paramore: 19:15

It wasn't that it was hidden. It was more that it's not promoted. So you can say, well, why wasn't it promoted? I'm going to go back to my North America and Australia. thing. Um, Life Sciences is not in the business of healthcare service delivery. And they don't understand the healthcare service delivery ecosystem, nor the health IT ecosystem underneath service delivery. So they would have to be highly motivated to start to build that bridge. And sort of from their historical point of view, my opinion, it's just been like, yeah, I said it in the small print. Yeah. In the magazine ad. Or somebody threw it in there in that weird voice. They do it then. If you had, I mean, no, no, no. You're right. Right. Yeah. Um, so we've said it. We've made it available. We've said it. Um, but we are not distributing it in a way that the consumer consumes healthcare today. And we know that through what's happening with telehealth, virtual care, text first, patients are engaging with people through their smartphone. These things need to flow. And, you know, we've got a complicated flow anyway in the North America in that example. So just to get from all, all I'm trying to do, Vic, I'm going to get it from Australia to North America digitally. Once it lands in, then we've got a health IT ecosystem that will innovate once the content is there.

Vic: 20:36

And so talk to me about the overall market, like of a thousand drugs that are the most widely prescribed drugs. What percent have coupons available and does it, does it differ brand generic? I would think branded would be more often.

Miriam Paramore: 20:50

Yeah, that's right. So let's start there with the branded generic. So these are only for branded.

Vic: 20:55

drugs.

Miriam Paramore: 20:55

Okay.

Vic: 20:56

On your website, I think it's 1200. That's right. I

Miriam Paramore: 20:59

think it's

Vic: 20:59

1215. 1215. Yeah. Sorry.

Miriam Paramore: 21:01

And we just did our first, um, inaugural copay coupon benchmark report where we tried to set the ecosystem out there. And if you want to do that, you go to artixutility. com and there's, yeah.

Vic: 21:11

And I'll put a link to the, in the show notes so people can see it as, yeah.

Miriam Paramore: 21:14

So it's just paints the picture of the availability and it, it shows that And those 1, 200 drugs cover, uh, 168 disease states, I think. And they, they kind of cluster in therapeutic areas. And we've, um, you know, just to educate. It's

Vic: 21:29

the high utilization. It's the high utilization. Once

Miriam Paramore: 21:30

it's cardiology, it's diabetes, but it's also, uh, autoimmune, it's, um, uh, there's a lot of DERM, you know, so there, there are five or six that are kind of high cluster. Yeah, I

Vic: 21:41

mean, my highly technical evaluation was, it's all the Big disease states and big indications that people spend money on.

Miriam Paramore: 21:49

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, an example, I was just talking to you earlier before the show, there's an Ozempic. Yeah, so let's talk about, I mean,

Vic: 21:56

the GLP 1, Ozempic is a huge topic. This will help my ratings because as soon as I say GLP 1, the podcast does better.

Miriam Paramore: 22:03

Yes, exactly.

Vic: 22:04

So, um, so Ozempic is an incredible drug. I think it has more side effects than are commonly discussed, but let's leave that aside. A lot of people really want it. Yeah. And it, it helps you lose weight. Certainly. Yeah. It is quite expensive. Yeah. And so that's a roadblock. That's people are searching for ways to save money and all the compounding stuff is in response to that. But there are coupons available.

Miriam Paramore: 22:30

There are coupons. I'm holding a coupon right here that says pay as little as 25 per prescription. Hold

Vic: 22:37

on.

Miriam Paramore: 22:37

It's 1, 200. Yeah. So pay as little as 25. dollars per prescription. Exactly. Touche. So guys, this is dramatic. And it's not just for a Zempik. It's for heart failure. It's for not, you know, it's for heart failure drugs. It's for Farcega, which is the kidney failure drug that I wrote about. And so this can, this, you know, says in particular, it's for one month, two month or three months supply for up to 24 months. So this one persists. What's really cool about this one is that. You know, you're, what you're doing is you're removing a little bit of confusion barrier, not just cost barrier, but you know how there's so many different names like the Ozempic goes under Wigovi for weight loss.

Marcus: 23:21

Yeah. There'd be

Miriam Paramore: 23:21

another coupon for Wigovi. So you don't have to worry about sort of trying to understand what another name for something is if you're trying to find savings. But your

Vic: 23:31

system, again, in partnership with Another IT services group would solve that complexity, because you just see what I'm prescribed for and then give me the appropriate coupon for that.

Miriam Paramore: 23:45

Exactly. So it's just a simple ping. Is there a coupon for Ozempic? Yes, there is. And then it goes,

Vic: 23:51

talk about the, the, um, revenue cycle and kind of billing cycle. So that gets inserted into the prescription e prescription order.

Miriam Paramore: 24:00

That's right. Okay.

Vic: 24:01

And so then when I show up at the pharmacy, there's a second payer in addition to my normal insurance company that is providing payment, which reduces my self pay. Is that close to right? That's,

Miriam Paramore: 24:13

yeah, very good. Excellent. So these are specifically called pharmaceutical co pay. coupons and what they are designed to do is offset the burden of the out of pocket cost of the consumer. So we know all the games that are played in pharmacy pricing and PBM and insured pricing and nobody ever knows what's going on. Yeah,

Vic: 24:35

and the insurer is getting a rebate. So maybe it's a large employer. Yeah, it's getting a rebate, but the employee doesn't Doesn't benefit from that savings. I know. Their co pay is really high. Right. This cuts through all of that complexity and just goes right to their Their pocketbook. Their part of it. Their, their

Miriam Paramore: 24:50

wallet. Yeah. And so what happens with, and we, we would have to have a whole bunch, maybe we should do a series on this, but we would have to have a whole bunch to get into sort of the, what I call the nonsense of All of that move the ball, you know, kind of math that's on the side of the industry. But if, if you have But the nice

Vic: 25:06

thing about this is you can ignore all that. Just, exactly. It's just my part, my co pay, I'm going to pay.

Miriam Paramore: 25:10

Let's just focus on what Miriam has to pay when she goes up to the counter. Based on the tier of the formulary, first of all, if it's even on formulary or not. Is, is when, what, what you're dealing with, with a lot of these drugs and we know there's a lot of data, a lot of reporting around employers being very afraid of this drug exactly because there's so many of their employees that want to take it and it, it's material cost to them regardless of what they've negotiated with the PBM. Well, okay, you guys figure that out. If it's on formulary, if it's at a higher tier, you're going to have a higher co pay or you're going to have, in some cases, a if it's not on the formulary,

Vic: 25:49

you'll have a really high, you'll have to pay for it, almost all of it.

Miriam Paramore: 25:52

Exactly. Or if you have a very high deductible, you may be, you know, my deductible. That's my

Vic: 25:56

situation. I have a 7, 500, yeah, right. 9,

Miriam Paramore: 25:58

000. 9, 000. You know, so you have a lot of stuff. So, there are a lot of scenarios that can create an out of pocket problem for the consumer, and this is designed to solve the out of pocket problem. I see you have one of my charts up here. More than, well, right at 50 percent of the 1, 215 coupons, uh, bring the cost down to 10 or less, and I think it's 39 percent that the cost is zero. So, imagine the impact of the out of pocket cost being zero. just show up and get it when, uh, these people need these expensive, um, specialty, whatever, you know, type of drug, it's life changing truly. Yeah. And

Vic: 26:41

I don't care who you are. If you are very wealthy, saving 1, 000 per month, and if you are not so wealthy, you can't afford it. And so, I mean, you just, it's unreachable to pay 1, 200 a month if you are a certain income level. And so, No matter what demographic you're in, I think everyone likes a coupon, especially if it's easy and fits into the payment flow where I just show up in my pharmacy like usual, but instead of charging me 1, 100, they charge me 20 bucks.

Miriam Paramore: 27:12

Exactly. Or, or, or zero. And you know, one of the things that I think is occurring on in with, um, Ozempic and the GLP ones is the knockoffs and the You know, I'm a farm, I'm a doctor and name only, you know, call this number and I'll prescribe Ozympic for you. And then here's something that's sort of like it. Yeah.

Vic: 27:29

There's like a post it notes on telephone poles. Exactly.

Miriam Paramore: 27:32

And I think, you know, that, that worries me a little bit from a consumer safety perspective. I would much rather people, if they need these, uh, types of therapies, take one that's been through the FDA that we know is real. And, um, you know, we've removed the cost barrier for you.

Vic: 27:47

And so talk to me about, Um, is it in market now? Are there platforms that you have partnered with? There are. That people could use to access these coupons now? And then I want to Um, also talk about where you're going to grow.

Miriam Paramore: 28:02

Great. Thank you. Yes. I'm so excited. Uh, we actually have, um, you know, I got my first check in the mail, uh, a few weeks ago and I took a picture of it. Like, you know, like you always do. And, um, we have. You know, assign contract with two clients and we have another one out for signature. And we have what we call an early adopter community, which is where we allow people to come into our sandbox and we give them an API key and let them experiment for two weeks before they make a decision. See how

Vic: 28:30

easy, how fast it is, how responsive. Yeah, exactly.

Miriam Paramore: 28:33

Um, get comfortable because, you know, part of, can I just make an aside real quick? Yeah, sure. Like part of my ethos, because I'm so technical and I've built so many technical businesses. Is that when, if you said to me, Hey, Mary, I've got this thing and it's API driven. Here's some content. I'd be like, Oh, cool. And I would subscribe. But so I was sort of thinking that people would go, well, I know what an API is. I know what a content file is, you know, what's the big deal. But people really do still need to shake the trees. And I think a lot of the reason why is because they're not familiar with this content because it's never been centralized or distributed broadly. It's not like, Oh, it's an ICD

Vic: 29:09

10

Miriam Paramore: 29:10

list. It's just, well, and I think in general.

Vic: 29:13

There's so much, um, security issues and fraud and concerns about hacking that anything that touches IT just has a big barrier to start with.

Miriam Paramore: 29:26

That's true. And I'll tell you, we just did our first security questionnaire, which, you know, like, you know.

Vic: 29:30

Yeah.

Miriam Paramore: 29:31

Give me a. some aspirin right now, um, or Tylenol, but, um, but I get it. And one of the things that we do when we design this is it made an intentionally so we're not a BAA. So again, this is a content file. I'm not getting any PHI or PII. You're not giving me any, you're not asking me for any, you're simply asking me for this coupon information, which is, you know, public domain, it's non proprietary still, because we have any sort of, um, Digital or tech connection. There's the rightful concerns for privacy and security and you know, we have we have all of those things Okay, so it is

Vic: 30:04

it's live with yes one partner. It's live with more than one more Okay, is there somewhere that you could promote to have them check people check it out? I

Miriam Paramore: 30:13

you know, I don't have Okay. Yeah. So we don't need to do it right

Marcus: 30:17

now.

Miriam Paramore: 30:18

But I, but I, hopefully I will soon and, but I, what I can tell you is that we have every health IT, uh, type of vendor in the ecosystem in our, uh, early adopter community right now. So what do I mean by that? Well, uh, If you're pre visit or at the point of visit, you're talking about provider facing software. So you're talking about that patient engagement, that scheduling, that EHR, you know, that, uh, post, um, you know, post visit followup. Uh, if you're in the hospital setting, you're talking about registration and ADT or, you know, uh, post discharge care coordination, you know, type companies. So if those types of companies, we do have price transparency. I want to take just a moment on that. I'll come back to that in just a moment. So provider facing, price transparency facing, which just means anybody that's trying to do a price transparency dashboard. And then you've got payer facing. Well, why would payers want this? They have formularies that, you know, doesn't this fight with formulary in the past that used to be the case. But now because of the pressure from self insured employers, And we have self insured employers, uh, IT vendors too, um, they want any tool, and let's come back to this as a tool. They want any tool. If they're going to look at formulary and do all that magic math that we talked about before, and they can lay this right there and go, hmm, my consumer doesn't have to pay it. I don't have to pay it. Pharma's making up the gap. Yeah. Maybe I'll take a little bit of that instead of some of this other, I mean, I think

Vic: 31:46

for a payer, they'd rather their members save and push it on to pharma, if they have a choice.

Miriam Paramore: 31:52

Right. I mean, and they want them, everybody wants somebody on the medication because everybody wins. So, so, so every one of those ecosystems, um, health IT is in our early adopter community, which is validating for us the rising tide. Theory, so we're really excited about that, but I want to come back to price transparency because this is a point I really want to help people understand. For any medication that you or I go to buy at the pharmacy There are three prices. There's not one price. There's three prices. The first price is the price you're going to pay using your insurance. And that varies based on our insurance plan and our

Vic: 32:34

That's all the complex math. Right? Yeah.

Miriam Paramore: 32:36

The second price is the cash price. What you will pay if you don't use insurance.

Vic: 32:42

Yeah. That's what Cuban, Mark Cuban's thing, Cost Plus Drugs, is showing that a lot of times the cash price is lower than that.

Miriam Paramore: 32:48

Right. And GoodRx surfaces those and SingleCare surfaces those. But that's, I'm using insurance and, you know, who knows what it is, Magic 8 Ball. Yeah. Um, we've got formulary and deductible issues there. Yeah. Uh, I'm not going to use insurance, that's the cash price. But the third price is when you use insurance and you have a copay card. And almost every time that wins in terms of the lowest out of pocket for the consumer. So I am so passionate about making people aware.

Vic: 33:19

synonymous with the coupon process? Yes.

Miriam Paramore: 33:23

It is a copay coupon card. So, sorry about that. Sometimes you'll hear me say copay card. So, when I

Vic: 33:29

get an RxUtility login through a partner of yours, I would have this virtual copay coupon card. I don't have to carry it with me, but it would be categorized like that in the payment system. Is that right? Or did I mess up something?

Miriam Paramore: 33:46

Well, so one, here's an example. One of our contracts that's not quite signed, but it will be very soon. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, um, person, um, is an employer facing, okay. Self insured employer facing health IT vendor and within their solution set, Um, within their navigation for their employees slash members, they have a place called medications. And when you go into the medications, it already surfaces sort of the cheapest pharmacy price, which is that cash price, but it will surface the copay coupon and that right there, it'll be digital. So it'll be in the app that the consumer is already using to manage their care. Um, it's, it's not like a separate thing over here that so, and that's the beauty of making it all digitally liquid.

Vic: 34:34

Yeah. And. And part of the magic of this design is that there's a lot of partners for you to collaborate with. Absolutely. Everyone is interested in getting their, their patients, their subscribers, their employees, their members to take the medications they've been prescribed. Right. And affordability is a huge issue just with, you know, The whole world right now.

Miriam Paramore: 34:55

Right. You know, I know one of the passions that you and I share is really trying to, I mean, you really actually both want to help people. I mean, we really, we really, really do. We also are, you know, sort of bored and frustrated by attempts to do stuff that don't actually do anything. You know, they don't, they don't make money. They're not successful investments. They don't help people. They're not, you know, moving a needle. And so we're a little bored with that. So, you know, partnering with the that I know so well, sometimes with people that I know well, like you, it has a lot of value because it has a lot of heart in it, you know,

Vic: 35:32

for me. Well, I mean, I know you have a couple of examples that I want to dig into, but I can just imagine someone who wants to have a Zimpac. The doc has said they would benefit from it and they can't afford it. Right. And so, you're changing that person's life right now. Right. And there's 1, 214 other medicines that are out there, too. Yeah, absolutely. So, give another example of, uh, how you see this rolling out.

Miriam Paramore: 35:59

Okay. So, like another drug example? Or whatever. I

Vic: 36:02

know you had a couple examples, uh, to talk about. to illustrate the power of it.

Miriam Paramore: 36:05

Yeah, okay. Well, I'm going to talk to you about this particular drug. Um, my dad, uh, passed away last year. He had, uh, kidney disease. And when I was working in our, in our product and, um, came up with this, um, example for Farsiga, which is an AstraZeneca drug, and one of the disease states that it's for is, is renal disease or, or kidney failure. I was interested in that and I, Um, I wrote about it because as I thought about people like my dad, um, Yeah, it's

Vic: 36:39

personal and it's really impactful.

Miriam Paramore: 36:40

It's very personal. So here's the, here's the data on this. And this is one of the top 20 drugs. in the nation. So this is not something that somebody occasionally takes in terms of sales volume, one of the top 20 drugs. So if you said to me, Oh yeah, but isn't good or, you know, whatever good RX makes it cheap. No, the cheapest price on good RX is 585 a month. Okay. The cash price, uh, or sorry, the, um, RX utility price with insurance, like just like the

Vic: 37:14

coupon we

Miriam Paramore: 37:15

just looked at for, um, Ozempic is 0. So, you're in the middle, you're either 585 cash or you're zero, out of pocket. And then, um, this one, Farcega gives me an example to show you another, another nuance of these coupons. It's really good. Sometimes these coupons can be used as cash. Not all the time. So, the 90 percent of the time, maybe 80, they're only used with commercial insurance. But sometimes the coupon will say. If the consumer does not want to use insurance,

Vic: 37:49

then you can use it for the cash price, then

Miriam Paramore: 37:51

we will pay and what they do is for Farsiga, they cap your price out of pocket. Remember, we talked about out of pocket cost. They cap it at 150. So GoodRx, the cheapest cash price, 5. 85. The coupon price, 5. 85. 150 capped per month. That is dramatic. That's dramatic.

Vic: 38:16

This is complicated, but having another option that is always the same price or much less expensive.

Miriam Paramore: 38:27

Right.

Vic: 38:27

Give, it's, it's inherently better for the members or for the patients.

Miriam Paramore: 38:31

Right. Exactly. So in this

Vic: 38:32

case it would save 500, 400 or 500 dollars per month for a life saving kidney You really can't afford not to take, although some people can't afford it, which is sad. And in other, other medicines, it can be like Ozempic is one of the more, more extreme examples. You're saving 1, 200 or 1, 150.

Miriam Paramore: 38:54

Yeah, exactly. So it can be, it really is, um, dramatic in its impact. So when we think about distribution and we think about working together with the health IT ecosystem, there are two things that I want to, you know, ask certainly for your help on which this podcast is helping with right now. Um, and, but I want to invite the community to do so. We were talking about really helping people and having impact. So we've made a commitment to, uh, 10 percent of all of our profits will be given to a not for profit. We are for profit. I made the decision as I sort of developed, how do I design this? I know how to run a for profit business, but I'm not really, I don't have any practice running a not for profit or know how that works. But what I can do is I can commit to, um, a 10 percent of profit donated to. Um, not for profit organizations specifically who help people with their medications. So that's part of our impact commitment.

Marcus: 39:49

Yeah. That's incredible. Um,

Miriam Paramore: 39:51

we are also committed to democracy of data, if you will, or data equity. We are bringing forward this tool not as some sort of IP that we're going to try to hoard or hold for hostage or only a few people can get. We have a pricing design that we discuss on our website, which says, you know, if you're small, medium, large, let's talk about the subscription level that's right for you because we want this to flow. I want this to flow into the biggest of the big.

Vic: 40:19

Yeah. So I have a lot of listeners that are, um, healthcare leaders in the health system, or maybe they are running a midsize physician group. And then I have a lot of, uh. Investors, VC investors and founders and management teams. And so maybe let's talk about if you interface with a patient, uh, it would fit in with the IT system, whether it's Epic or Cerner or Athena, it was somewhere in there. Yes. Or you'd have, um, kind of a patient management, relationship management with patient system. It would plug into one of these technology systems. That's right. If you're a physician or a physician leader. You would look to your technology tools, your technology vendors, and then ask them to partner with RxUtility. Yeah. That gets you much more scale. Yes.

Miriam Paramore: 41:10

Yes, it does. You know, we, um, are exploring all the various app stores and, um, so like that to be kind of a plug in. But that really is not quite appropriate for us because we are, again, simply a tool for the existing health IT. Um, vendor, that's the primary vendor of treatment when, with respect to prescribing. At the

Vic: 41:32

highest level, without PHI, which makes it much easier to get plugged into HIPAA, you don't have enough information. So you need to partner with whoever is the, Um, patient record or holding the PHI so they know what I've been prescribed and they can then match. Yeah,

Miriam Paramore: 41:51

exactly. All they're doing, they know what, they have the patient record and they have the medication record. And for every medication. So like

Vic: 41:57

Surescripts for instance would be. Um, maybe, maybe that's too, too large, but they have, they have the prescriptions, they know it's me, and they could marry up your coupon there.

Miriam Paramore: 42:09

We expect to have a partnership with Surescripts and those similar, there are networks, there are also utilities that are underneath kind of the plumbing, the data plumbing of healthcare. Because if they, I'll tell you what they don't have Vic, they don't have RxUtility. They do not have a content file of all these, Coupons because this does not exist. We built it. So we have scarcity value. What I think is the interesting way to think about it, if you're a provider, is I know I want people on medication. And I know there are coupons out there. Are they in my system or not? If they're not, then let's get them in there. And that's an easy conversation. Of course, I've talked to Epic. I've talked to, you know, I've talked to, I'm trying to talk to everyone. So y'all holler, you know, let me answer the phone, please. Well,

Vic: 42:53

I think the way that it works best with the big systems like Cerner, this comes from the customers, uh, health system calls and says, we want this, right? And then that gets you to the top of the list.

Miriam Paramore: 43:06

No, that's exactly right. And you, the way you started this part of our discussion, that's exactly right. And so if we can help people to understand that this is not, there's no gotcha here. This is not a, you know, sort of a bait and switch. This is about things that are absolutely real that have been around forever, but they're just, it's nobody was paying attention or maybe it was a little awkward or, you know, and, and somebody said, well, You have to build something. So I'm the somebody that builds something. And now we're democratizing it. We're putting it out there. We're making it easy for the health IT vendor to subscribe. When we talked about price transparency a minute ago, there are some price, well, Turquoise Health is a great one. I love that company. But what they don't focus on pharmaceuticals, I don't think, but more and more with RTBC and other sort of real time benefit check for pharmacy, we're starting to get some transparency into what drugs cost. Well, That's an incomplete data flow if it doesn't have this information. So we need to be part of all of those flows. So you may be a transaction processor or you could be facing a provider or you could be facing a, um, employer or a care management team. Um, you could be facing even a

Vic: 44:17

be a CCM company or

Miriam Paramore: 44:19

absolutely chronic. Yeah.

Vic: 44:20

Chronic

Miriam Paramore: 44:21

care management is a great example. So a company like Omada, which is out there that has a lot of technology. Hello, Amana. I haven't called you yet, but I will. Um, those sorts of companies, what do they do every day? They have nurses, social workers, case managers talking to patients. And the number one thing they talk about is your medication.

Vic: 44:40

And they have a lot of trouble getting, um, pain. The patient to pick up and then they don't have enough content to talk about. Other than. Are you on your medication? Are you following your plan to walk and how, you know, so giving them another topic that's really impactful and saving money, I think is huge.

Miriam Paramore: 44:59

I think so too. And we, we have reached out and are in conversations with people around the pharmacy delivery. You know, chain, like there are people that just deliver things to your home, you know? Um, so we're in conversations there about, gosh, you're delivering it. I know you don't have the script,

Marcus: 45:17

right?

Miriam Paramore: 45:17

But, but can we catch it on the back backside somehow and interface? Cause then you can upstream it. And once it's at the point of dispense, even

Vic: 45:29

if you plug the coupon in after it's delivered, they still get the benefit of the next on the next fill.

Miriam Paramore: 45:35

Yeah, exactly. And you just got to get it in the system. You just got to get the data in the system and then it will persist and carry forward.

Vic: 45:43

So Miriam talk a little bit about where you want to take RX utility. You've been involved, um, in very large businesses, CEO and president of large publicly traded companies. Um, I know you are hiring now, so talk to me about the next maybe 12 months, how is RxUtility going to grow, and then uh, Maybe we have a listener that wants to join. So talk about like what you're hiring

Miriam Paramore: 46:08

around. Oh great. Thank you so much Yes, so we have been fortunate to have great response from the market and we have product in the market We have product market fit a little dialed Pricing a little bit dialed, but we need more and there's really more business in front of me that I can capture We're sort of like telling the

Vic: 46:25

story and helping people understand how to plug it in.

Miriam Paramore: 46:29

Yeah, exactly so my role I see as being primarily the outward communicator. What is this thing? What's the story? Why is it important? How do I plug into it? Um, but I need a, a partner who is, um, business development slash sales. And I have to use both words cause some people view them very differently, but this is the person who's going to run with all of the opportunities that we have in our CRM and develop those relationships until their contracts. And take

Vic: 46:56

it from, I want to do this. I heard Miriam on stage. I heard this podcast. But there's a lot of details around how the contract works and getting them signed up and getting them using it and then getting the pull through probably.

Miriam Paramore: 47:08

Yeah, exactly. So it's a, with the ones that we've, the two we've implemented so far, it's really a conversation around, let's get you an API and play in the sandbox. Let's do some test calls and understand. answer your questions, and then let's go live and begin to watch it be operationalized in your business. There's a short learning curve, very short for people to digest what this is and go, Oh, and then they really begin to see how it shows in their workflow, how they can innovate on it.

Vic: 47:35

Yeah.

Miriam Paramore: 47:36

And that's the exciting thing is that We provide content that's just more fuel for all of these health IT vendors to innovate around, which makes their, their software better. So there's hand holding with the client, of course, on the back end. Now as, as people get And there's

Vic: 47:51

strategy around, so how do you, how do you construct a, a, a multi year deal.

Miriam Paramore: 47:57

Yeah, exactly. So we've got, you know, it's a, it's a subscription right now. Our, our, our, um, contracts are set up as a one year subscription, but I think it's appropriate that they, people be able to get out of them pretty easy. We're not trying to hold the data hostage. We're also not trying to hold anybody hostage and we're not trying to make it too expensive. So we're just trying to make it as easy to consume as if you were to go on the internet and buy something. You know, like subscribe to QuickBooks I use as an example. Now it's not that easy because healthcare needs to go through all the privacy and security hoops before it will, you know, buy anything that is tech. But we're gonna try, we're trying to strip away all of those things. We're trying to strip away all those things. So it's really about we help that client understand how does this content make your software better. And making it better is because it advantages is. somebody that they are already selling to. They're either selling to a doctor, they're selling to a consumer, they're selling to a health plan, they're selling to an employer. And these folks are all struggling with the high price of drugs. And so we've now given them a new tool that they can plug into their solution set and bring more value to their end customer. But sometimes that takes a little bit of education. And so, uh, That becomes part of the sales cycle, Vince, to, you know, you have it just like any other sales cycle. You have a lead, you have an initial conversation. Somebody hears me talk. Bring them into the

Vic: 49:19

sandbox, teach them how it works. Exactly. And then they get excited. And then they go, Oh,

Miriam Paramore: 49:23

well, this is really, the universal response of the, let's say 10 companies we have in, you know, early adopter status is, Oh, yeah. Well, this is really straightforward,

Marcus: 49:33

you

Miriam Paramore: 49:33

know, because it is and it's, it's a tool and we believe it's a really powerful tool in terms of patient. Um, it's so close to the patient. It's right in their, their wallet,

Vic: 49:44

you know,

Miriam Paramore: 49:45

keeping that money in their wallet. And

Vic: 49:46

knowing you, you have built this for significant scale. Yes. So it, there'll be a lot of partners that come on this team. 330 million people in the country, they can all use this and save money. And I would think RX utility is ready to scale or it will be before the volume comes. Oh, we're ready. So

Miriam Paramore: 50:04

it's my software architect. He's brilliant. And you know, yeah, you're

Vic: 50:07

built big, big systems before really big.

Miriam Paramore: 50:10

And so the, the, the thing that's so exciting about tech these days is you and I talked about this before the total cost of ownership of any of these tools that I use to build my tools is microscopic compared to what it was. It's just unbelievably different. The ability to buy infrastructure and scale as you go, and then, but project and understand what your expense would be down the road, still creates high confidence, I have high confidence in reliability, and um, you know, security, but also margin for, for me as an entrepreneur.

Vic: 50:46

Yeah. You can keep the price pretty low and still have a healthy, growing business.

Miriam Paramore: 50:50

Yeah, very much so. So if we can tell the story and then I can get some help on that conversion of, I'm interested in the story too. I want to be a paying subscriber. Yeah. That, that's that role that I'm looking for right now and I really want people that are enthusiastic about helping patients and have really a heart for the idea of helping the patient afford the health care they need while they have a head for business. And that means, you know, you got to be scrappy, it's the start of it, you got to be scrappy, you got to be fast, everybody kind of does, um, everything. Yeah, the way Howard frames it

Vic: 51:21

is, is uh, You've had a lot of success in health care and technology and data and payment networks in your career Mm hmm, and I think you have and I have a feeling like this to want to start giving back and making more of a difference

Miriam Paramore: 51:37

Yes. Yes. And

Vic: 51:38

my belief is you kicked around the idea of doing arts utility as a nonprofit I did but decided that designing the incentives and hiring and scaling the business You know how to do that right in for profit models and it would be safer and more reliably able to really bring this value to patients to do it in a for profit setting. That's right. But that like impact double bottom line, make a difference, do well, we're doing good. All that stuff is kind of the ethos of who you're looking to bring on.

Miriam Paramore: 52:10

Yeah, it is. And you're really one of my key advisors. I appreciate that very much. So anybody that's kicking around an idea, I highly recommend, you know, that you talk to talk to Vic and kick an idea around. I did. end up believing and do believe that a sustainable growing ongoing business that does not have to be funded through charitable donations.

Vic: 52:33

Right. That's such a distraction to bring in the actual product. It's the most

Miriam Paramore: 52:37

valuable thing that I am personally suited to do to create something. And I think there are a lot of other similar utilities that can evolve from this idea of a data utility that people subscribe to rather than everybody reinventing Everything. Right. And then sort of hoarding it as, uh, as an IP component. Well, and

Vic: 53:03

I was talking to this, this other person last week about, um, we have too many point solution, solutions in healthcare, right? So there's, there's death by a thousand point solution. So. If you're an IT manager in where you are, provider, payer technology, pharma, you have too many health, uh, point systems. You're trying to consolidate that.

Marcus: 53:24

Mm-hmm.. Vic: And so I love your architecture where existing platforms, but not be yet another point system that they have to manage.

Miriam Paramore: 53:32

I think that's a, um, that's an excellent point. I think that we've seen so many, um, kind of decent to maybe really good IT ideas that become. to the 20 million businesses and they just really never go past that. Point fatigue is a real thing. You know, we see the growth of the monolith of Epic, which has grown for, you know, wonderful reasons. I'd love for them to, you know, subscribe to our utility. Um, but, but everybody is just trying to innovate. You know, people are trying to use what they know. Perhaps they're not as educated on, the incumbency of the health IT ecosystem, and maybe they're trying to, it's a me too, or things like that. So I, I know how the current ecosystem works together, and where we have status quo that's good, so that it's a incumbent that's going to stick around. Yeah, to

Vic: 54:26

me, that's the difference is you know how to build your business model. So that it fits in with the existing incumbents and really propels them, empowers them to do more.

Miriam Paramore: 54:37

Exactly.

Vic: 54:37

If you're an outsider coming into healthcare, a lot of times you decide, well, I want to control the interface with the patient. You don't really understand the incumbents. Yes. But that doesn't work very well. So I like your model much better.

Miriam Paramore: 54:50

Well that's where we say bless your heart, you know, like we, like we do.

Vic: 54:54

Bless your heart. Welcome to Nashville. Uh, go to some of these sessions and learn something. So.

Miriam Paramore: 54:58

But I'm really, uh, I'm really glad that you see it and that it's coming across in a way that makes, um, business sense and strategic sense. More importantly, a strategic extent, um, uh, make strategic sense to someone like you who is a. entrepreneur who has a fund, who sees a lot of these companies, because it sounds like to me, you're, you're getting it. It's like, Oh, I see how that could get work.

Vic: 55:23

Yeah. I mean, people love saving money. My wife loves saving money. If there's an easy way to save money on your drugs, everyone's going to want it. And so all of these it systems, one will, one will start offering it in the next month or so. And then they'll start to get a lot of attention. And I think it will be, have this big, like, pull of, of gravity effect that everyone wants to actually deal with it.

Miriam Paramore: 55:47

I hope so. I keep using the example of, you know, when you bring something new to market that hasn't been in market before they, you know, people call it product category or a new category or like a new, sometimes you have to pull the market to you. Yeah. And what I have in my head is that it's like chocolate. If you've never had chocolate, you don't know what You're missing.

Marcus: 56:07

But once

Miriam Paramore: 56:07

you try one. Boy, is it good. And then, so I'm hoping that it has chocolate like, uh, virility once it gets out there. Well,

Vic: 56:15

the number of people that, if you save 1, 000 on your GLP 1. Every month. You're gonna tell all your, all your buddies. Yeah. And then it just spreads.

Miriam Paramore: 56:24

And you don't have to, if you're the consumer, you don't have to know how or all the wiring. It doesn't matter how. All I know is. You just said, oh, I had this coupon.

Vic: 56:29

Right.

Miriam Paramore: 56:30

And people are like, coupon? Okay, well. Yeah, exactly. That's it.

Vic: 56:34

Okay, so, um, I'm going to put your study in the show notes, but give people a handoff to the website or where do they want them to find you to learn more about this?

Miriam Paramore: 56:42

Oh, yeah. Thank you so much. So just rxutility. com and we're out there on LinkedIn or hit our website. And if you want to contact me, it's Miriam at rxutility, M I R I A M. Excellent.

Vic: 56:58

And you published the first report. Yes. How often are you going to publish reports? This

Miriam Paramore: 57:03

is cool. So we, uh, did our first inaugural, uh, so once a year we will do this co pay coupon benchmark report, but we're going to do what I'm calling flash reports. And this gives me a great cue up to hold myself accountable. We're going to do these sort of flash reports and then we anticipate doing quarterly reports, but just, just very quickly at the end here, you know how a couple of weeks ago the Medicare, the top 10. List of drugs that have been price negotiation for Medicare were published and it showed the old price and the new price. It was very good Distinction between the old and the new and the new price is going to affect January 1, 2026. So we've got a year Yeah, I have a coupon Vince. How many of those ten? Do you think I have a coupon for I'll put it that way Let's see. I think

Vic: 57:45

nine

Miriam Paramore: 57:46

Good guess, but it's ten.

Vic: 57:47

Ten. Yeah.

Miriam Paramore: 57:48

So for, for ten out of ten, I have a coupon and the highest the, the highest a consumer would pay today pre price negotiation is ten bucks.

Vic: 57:58

Wow, that's incredible. So all this press about, uh I know, right? U. S. government now can negotiate all this benefit. You could get much more benefit. Just by signing up for RxUtility.

Miriam Paramore: 58:10

Yeah, the challenge, or not the challenge, but the great thing is that's Medicare and I'm commercial. So we'll let the entire U. S. government negotiate that for Medicare and I got you right here. RxUtility for commercial. So I'm very excited. It's what a great story. Yeah,

Vic: 58:25

that's incredible. So

Miriam Paramore: 58:26

that's an example of a little what I would call a flash report that we're going to put out and that'll probably be before the end of the year.

Vic: 58:32

So people should sign up for the ongoing reports. Yes, yes. And then they'll get these flash reports and they'll get the annual report.

Miriam Paramore: 58:41

Right. When you come to RX Utility, um, and you say you want to download the, uh, Benchmark report, it asks you to put in your name and email so we can put you on the list to get the ongoing things. Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. Yep.

Vic: 58:53

Yep. Okay. Miriam, thanks for doing this. Excited to follow it. And I'm already signed up. I'm going to try to get. I don't think I'm on any branded drugs, but as soon as I do,

Miriam Paramore: 59:01

you let me know. Yeah.

Vic: 59:03

Okay. Thank you so much. It

Miriam Paramore: 59:04

was so much fun. Thank you.