The drug-pricing index
One pharmacy in America publishes its true cost plus a fixed 15% on every drug it sells. What America Pays tracks all 1,032 of them against what everyone else charges — with 595 prices already checked against federal pharmacy-cost data.
Every number links to its source. See the methodology →
The whole Cost Plus catalog, with 595 prices independently benchmarked against federal data. Pick a way to poke at it.
Five real medicines, a slider, live prices. Most Americans guess an order of magnitude too high — that gap is the whole story. Shareable score.
PlayStart → Your medicine cabinetAdd the medicines you actually take, get an itemized receipt: Cost Plus vs. what pharmacies pay wholesale vs. listed retail, line by line.
BuildOpen → The full catalogEvery drug Cost Plus sells — search, filter by condition, sort, download. Each price badged by how it was verified: hand-checked, federal data, or pending.
ExploreBrowse → The landscape1,032 dots, one per drug. Watch where Cost Plus lands against what US pharmacies pay wholesale — most sit at or below the pharmacies' own cost.
VisualizeSee it →Under the full 1,032-drug catalog sit twelve drugs checked by hand against a published cash price for every number — the strictest tier of the index. Prices captured from costplusdrugs.com and drugs.com on July 7, 2026; two comparators, never blended.
The conservative comparison: the lowest published discounted cash price — the coupon floor, not the counter price — as a multiple of the Cost Plus price for the same 30-day supply. Every multiple is a lower bound.
Comparator: lowest published discounted cash price, drugs.com Price Guide, normalized to a 30-count supply; gray bars sit below parity. Both sources captured July 7, 2026.
Each row links to the exact product page and price guide it was pulled from. The right-hand column is the retail figure Cost Plus itself publishes — reproduced with attribution, not independently verified. Beyond these twelve, 583 of the 1,032 catalog prices are now benchmarked against an independent source — federal NADAC acquisition-cost data or this index (see methodology). Explore all 1,032 drugs — search, filter, sort, CSV →
| Drug | Supply | Cost Plus¹ | Cash floor² | vs. floor | Retail at other pharmacies³ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tadalafilgen. Cialis — ED / BPH | 20mg × 30 | $6.68 | $38.92 | 5.8× | $1,300.50 |
| SildenafilED / pulmonary hypertension | 20mg × 30 | $6.74 | $28.71 | 4.3× | $183.60 |
| Abirateronegen. Zytiga — prostate cancer | 250mg × 30 | $19.23 | $74.09 | 3.9× | $1,093.20 |
| Imatinibgen. Gleevec — CML leukemia | 400mg × 30 | $34.50 | $117.00 | 3.4× | $9,657.30 |
| Atorvastatingen. Lipitor — cholesterol | 20mg × 30 | $5.46 | $17.64 | 3.2× | $68.70 |
| Esomeprazolegen. Nexium — acid reflux | 40mg × 30 | $5.86 | $13.62 | 2.3× | $216.60 |
| Rosuvastatingen. Crestor — cholesterol | 10mg × 30 | $5.67 | $9.60 | 1.7× | $134.10 |
| Lisinoprilblood pressure | 10mg × 30 | $5.39 | $8.98 | 1.7× | $33.90 |
| Escitalopramgen. Lexapro — depression / anxiety | 10mg × 30 | $6.25 | $9.02 | 1.4× | $47.70 |
| Metformintype 2 diabetes | 1000mg × 30 | $5.57 | $5.58 | 1.0× | $39.90 |
| Aripiprazolegen. Abilify — schizophrenia / bipolar | 5mg × 30 | $6.93 | $6.68 | 0.96× | $685.50 |
| Mesalaminegen. Asacol HD — ulcerative colitis | 800mg DR × 30 | $97.40 | $93.47 | 0.96× | $245.10 |
¹ Live costplusdrugs.com product-page price, July 7, 2026; excludes the flat $5 pharmacy fee and $5.25 shipping per order. ² Lowest published discounted cash price, drugs.com Price Guide, July 7, 2026, normalized to 30-count where the listed quantity differs (see methodology). ³ "Retail Price at Other Pharmacies" as displayed on each costplusdrugs.com product page — the company's own comparison, reproduced with attribution, not independently verified.
The real version of this index updates weekly and is written to be quoted — the same signal, packaged for the person reading it.
Embeddable rows and charts with the source one click away — so a drug-pricing story starts from the index instead of a press release, and the fact-check is already done.
Testimony-grade fact sheets per drug and per middleman, footnoted to the FTC record and the peer-reviewed studies — ready for the next hearing on PBM reform.
Data-driven reporting, every figure footnoted.
A month of generic imatinib costs $34.50 to sell profitably. Its listed retail is $9,657.30. Researchers put Medicare's overpayment on seven generic oncology drugs at $661.8 million a year.
Briefing 01Open briefing → PBMs · The middlemenThe FTC counted what the three biggest pharmacy benefit managers made by marking up specialty generics at their own pharmacies: $7.3 billion above cost in six years.
Briefing 02Open briefing →What America Pays is a working demonstration by Letter Leverage — researched, verified and shipped in one session. The real version updates weekly and gets cited by default.