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The Hollow Men of Hims

(www.alexkesin.com)
198 points quadrin | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.515s | source
1. deathanatos ◴[] No.44384232[source]
> The genius of Hims lies in understanding that consumers will pay almost any premium to avoid the humiliation of discussing erectile dysfunction or hair loss with an actual human being.

Maybe.

> Finasteride for hair loss runs about $10-15 per month as a generic,

I wish. Generic finasteride costs ~$70+t¹/3mo but only from a PBM, and $80/mo from a pharmacy, and is utterly uncovered by insurance.

Or maybe, it is that this is what American Rx healthcare looks like: https://imgur.com/a/awRSOsA ²

> and can cost as little as $2 per month with a GoodRx coupon.

And how does GoodRx somehow magically make drugs cheaper?

> On February 25, 2020, Consumer Reports published an article stating that GoodRx shared user data—specifically, pseudonymized advertising ID numbers that companies use to track the behavior of web users across websites, the names of the drugs that users browsed, and the pharmacies where user sought to fill prescriptions—with Google, Facebook, and around twenty other internet-based companies.

> On February 1, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission fined GoodRx US$1.5 million for violations of the Breach Notification Rule and the Federal Trade Commission Act for allegedly failing to obtain specific, informed, and unambiguous consent from users before disclosing health-related information to Facebook and Google.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoodRx#Controversy)

Last time I was offered a GoodRx coupon (well past those dates) it came with no informed consent of any kind, being merely presented as "magic coupon make drug cheaper" which triggered my "that's too good to be true" alarm. AFAICT, selling your information is the company's business plan.

¹Cigna is utterly incompetent, and while the discount of playing their game is sizable, it costs a great deal of time. It took, I think, 4? 5? calls to customer support to set up a prescription?

²No, proceeding to checkout does not get you the price. You don't get to know the price until after you've placed the order. I have to go on past experience, and prayers.

replies(2): >>44385719 #>>44387372 #
2. skunkworker ◴[] No.44385719[source]
You can get generic finasteride 1mg/180 (6 month) for as low as ~$17 if you go to a Kroger pharmacy and use their preferred savings program (I forget the name off hand) and no insurance coverage. Kroger discontinued their Kroger savings and now have a preferred card, which ended up being half the cost of the best deal on GoodRX.

Source: I picked up a 6 month supply last week.

3. potato3732842 ◴[] No.44387372[source]
>> The genius of Hims lies in understanding that consumers will pay almost any premium to avoid the humiliation of discussing erectile dysfunction or hair loss with an actual human being.

>Maybe.

It's like the author has never hung out with men over the age of about 25-30. That stuff is all broadly considered a laughing matter.