Every step is a struggle for Bruce Zimmerman, whose health has been deteriorating since he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis eight years ago.
In 2019, Zimmerman said, his then-employer offered him an opportunity that sounded irresistible: He and his wife, Becky, could take all-expense-paid trips to the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas to retrieve the medication he needed, Avonex, a drug made by Biogen
that currently retails in the U.S. for $2,159 per weekly dose. Through Florida-based PriceMDs, which paid for the couple’s travel, Zimmerman’s Avonex would be free of charge.
PriceMDs is part of a growing class of businesses called alternative funding programs, or AFPs, which promise to connect patients with more-affordable options for accessing specialty medications that often come at very high costs. AFPs contract with employer-sponsored health plans to offer coverage on specialty drugs.
While PriceMDs has taken the business model to another level, flying patients such as Zimmerman to other countries to bring back their drugs themselves, AFPs more typically obtain the medications overseas for significantly less than what they cost in the United States and get them shipped directly to patients. The savings can at times be so large that AFPs, at least in the case of PriceMDs, can send patients on Caribbean trips and still make money.
