Hospitals Charge Patients More For Drugs Than Pharmacies

On January 1, 2021, all hospitals were officially required to publish pricing information for all drugs and services to provide transparency to consumers. However, a recent GoodRx report finds hospitals charge higher prices for common generic drugs than pharmacies.

GoodRx's June 2021 report details prices for 16 hospitals’ chargemasters for 12 common drugs.  Among GoodRx's key findings are hospital chargemasters price common generic medications as much as 6,000% higher than the average retail price at pharmacies nationwide.

For example, aspirin has an average retail price of $0.15 per tablet in pharmacies nationwide, meaning that a monthly supply would only cost consumers about $4.50. However, in hospitals, the average cash price in our sample is about $6.00 per tablet, costing as little as $0.17 to as much as $19 per tablet depending on the hospital, says GoodRx.

'Our research on hospital chargemaster data highlights how legislation aimed at benefiting patients is unfortunately rife with challenges and may only work to shed light on how outrageous hospital pricing can be,' confirmed GoodRx.