No, that article shows it's a cheaper version of goodRx. His complaint is they are sometimes the same price as the cheapest competitor, and that they overstate the discount by not comparing their price to the actual price you'd pay a competitor.

But his first example, for example, is that they claim a 90% discount but are actually 60% of the goodRx price.

Bigger discounts are better, of course. I think many people, including myself, have been paying through the nose with "prescription coverage" which costs more than goodRx or Cost Plus Drugs.

The goodRx site is weird - it looks like a coupon site, where you go to other pharmacies and give them a coupon. I know this is exactly how goodRx works, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence when you're buying something as serious as prescriptions. The Cost Plus Drugs site is extremely spartan, but it doesn't give off the same weird vibes as goodRx - there are less steps involved. You just order from Cost Plus Drugs and it shows up in the mail, no in-between third party involved.

Behind the scenes, to the extent significant, the third party risk when it comes to drug quality is identical and low.

Pharma charges goodRx less because it's market segmentation - they're assuming many goodRx users would otherwise just suffer without and thus generate no profit.

Some people speculate goodRx subsidizes prices by selling data. I don't find their analysis convincing as they don't explain how goodRx has data meaningfully more valuable than the data pharma already buys from other sources like pharmacies.