GoodRx

GoodRx Holdings, Inc. is an American healthcare company that operates a telemedicine platform and free-to-use website and mobile app that track prescription drug prices in the United States and provide drug coupons for discounts on medications. GoodRx checks drug prices at more than seventy-five thousand pharmacies in the United States. The platform allows individuals to consult with a doctor online and obtain a prescription for certain types of medications at a cost of US$20, regardless of insurance status. Medical testing services, which vary in price, are also offered through the platform.

In 2017, the website received about fourteen million visitors a month. As of February 25, 2020, "millions of people" had downloaded the GoodRx app.

History
GoodRx was founded in Santa Monica, California, in 2011. In 2017, the company announced partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies to negotiate lower prescription drug costs. In September 2019, GoodRx acquired the telemedicine company HeyDoctor and rebranded the telemedicine platform as GoodRx Care. In 2021, GoodRx acquired the health video company HealthiNation.

In October 2022, GoodRx launched Provider Mode which allows healthcare providers to use the app to compare costs of drugs for patients based on different payment methods and drug alternatives.

GoodRx began its partnership with CVS Caremark in July 2023 to automatically apply coupons to insured CVS customers purchasing generic prescriptions at certain locations.

In April 2024, GoodRx Gold added Publix into their network. Now, across the southeast, GoodRx Gold members can use their cards at Publix Pharmacies to save money on their prescriptions.

Key people
The Santa Monica-based startup was founded in September 2011 by Trevor Bezdek and former Facebook executives Doug Hirsch and Scott Marlette. Marlette was one of the first 20 employees at Facebook and built Facebook's photo application. In 2005, Hirsch was the Vice President of Product at Facebook, working closely with Mark Zuckerberg.

Controversy
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. A few days later, GoodRx released a statement claiming it had made changes to prevent user search data on medical conditions and pharmaceuticals from being shared with Facebook. In March 2020, GoodRx stopped sending data about users' prescriptions to Facebook.

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