{"id":601901,"date":"2026-04-23T16:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T16:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/601901\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T16:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T16:26:15","slug":"discount-telehealth-visits-raise-concerns-about-pharma-company-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/601901\/","title":{"rendered":"Discount telehealth visits raise concerns about pharma company ties"},"content":{"rendered":"

The little pink pill recently got a retail boost. Addyi, a drug that treats low libido in premenopausal women, has been on the market for more than a decade after a controversial approval<\/a>. But in December the Food and Drug Administration expanded its use, approving the daily drug for all women under 65.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More women than ever now could qualify for the pill \u2014 and its maker, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, made it easy for them to find out. On its Instagram account, in Facebook ads, and on its website, Sprout shared how women could get a quick consult for an Addyi prescription: With a special code, PINKPILL, they could get a telehealth visit for just $10.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Drugmakers have long used discount coupons to encourage patients to use their high-cost medications. Now, coupons can influence not just a drug\u2019s out-of-pocket price, but the cost of consulting with a clinician who can prescribe it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Addyi, those consultations and discounts are managed by a telehealth company called Prescribery \u2014 one of several that work with drugmakers to help patients \u201ctalk to a doctor now<\/a>\u201d about their products. \u201cWe give them the coupon codes that they can use, and they get to market it to drive additional business,\u201d said Prescribery\u2019s CEO and CFO Ross Pope. \u201cThat\u2019s sort of our arrangement, where they\u2019re driving more business, both for them and for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

As links between pharmaceutical companies and telehealth providers grow<\/a>, health policy experts and legislators have sounded alarms. Telehealth companies can receive hundreds of thousands of dollars<\/a> in pharma fees a year. Critics have questioned whether those partnerships break federal laws prohibiting financial kickbacks to induce prescribing, highlighting their potential to promote uncoordinated care and overprescription of unnecessary, and often expensive, branded medications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The same questions, they say, apply to coupons extended for a drug-specific telehealth visit. \u201cThese discount structures are one more piece of the same puzzle,\u201d said Daniel Eisenkraft Klein, a postdoctoral fellow at the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. \u201cIt\u2019s this big financial architecture that\u2019s every step of the way designed to move patients toward the specific drug cheaply and quickly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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