Concept continues to grow in popularity

Under Genrus United’s business model, people buy an annual membership for $20 per person or $40 for a family of four.

Extra family members can be added at $5 each. Members can then use their newfound buying clout at participating pharmacies to get any of the generic drugs on the company’s list of 121 medications at discounts of roughly 75 per cent compared to the usual retail price uninsured customers are charged.

Genrus United, stationed in Bible Hill, which has negotiated lower prices for those drugs by using the group’s buying power, then tops up the amount participating pharmacies receive by using money it gets from memberships.

It’s not an entirely new idea. South of the border, several buying groups have cropped up to deliver lower prices on drugs.

Blink Health, at www.blinkhealth.com, lets people look up any one of 15,000 drugs, buy them directly from that website at a price negotiated by the buying group, and take that receipt to a participating pharmacy for discounts of up to 95 per cent on generic drugs.

“Almost everyone takes medications at some point in their lives and most people are overpaying,” Blink cofounder Geoffrey Chaiken told an American TV news program earlier this year.

But as common as the practice is in the United States, Genrus United is believed to be the first such buying group in Canada.

So far, the company only has four participating pharmacies in Atlantic Canada. But, then again, it only kicked off its operations with a trial run at Poulain’s Pharmacy last December, four months ago.

Since then, it has added Moffat’s Pharmacy in Halifax, the Cobequid Pharmachoice in Lower Sackville and the Your Pharmacist Drugstore in Liverpool.

And interest in the concept is growing. A group that owns 105 pharmacies in Ontario is already in negotiations to come aboard.

“We’ll have 20 (participating pharmacies) in Nova Scotia by August,” predicts Paul Graham, president and cofounder of Genrus United. “There are 10,000 drugstores across Canada. All we need is a few hundred.”

The Genrus United exec estimates the company can break even with 30 participating pharmacies in Nova Scotia and a membership of roughly 15,000.

The company’s long-term goal is to get about 100,000 Nova Scotians to take out memberships, which would alone bring the company $2 million in annual revenues. Applying that same ratio to all Canadians without health insurance would mean close to 1.7 million memberships for Genrus United or $33.4 million in annual membership revenues at $20 per person.

There are now about 200 members but that, too, is quickly growing.