Two sentences on cheapest option and then I will stop, because the rest is speculation and the thread is better without mine. What is documented is narrow. What is inferred from it is broad. The gap between them is where every argument here lives.
Why the cheapest option is often not the cheapest I have a specific reason for asking rather than idle curiosity, and the context is below.
Cheapest option: setting out the arithmetic in full, because I have had to do it twice and I would rather nobody else did.
Every step is shown. If the answer is wrong the error will be visible, which is the point of writing it out rather than posting the result.
Two sentences on cheapest option and then I will stop, because the rest is speculation and the thread is better without mine.
What is documented is narrow. What is inferred from it is broad. The gap between them is where every argument here lives.
Confirming the opening post from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
I would be cautious about generalising from the cheapest option example above. It is a good example. It is one example.
Helpful, and short, which on this subject is harder than long.
Insurance tier placement: a compound might be covered but on a higher tier (higher copay). Moving to a lower tier usually requires prior authorization or documented failure of cheaper alternatives.
Coming back to post #6, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
The reason cheapest option is hard to answer is that the obvious measurement and the relevant quantity are not the same thing, and substituting one for the other is silent.
Where somebody posts a comparison, the useful version states the date, the region and what was included.
Taking post #9 at face value and following it one step further.
Reading this cheapest option thread as someone who came in with a fixed view: the third and seventh replies moved me and the confident ones did not.
A definition problem is doing most of the work in this cheapest option discussion. Once the term is pinned down I suspect the disagreement mostly goes away and what is left is small.
Where I part company with post #8, and it is a narrow parting.
Nothing here is financial advice and none of it is a route to a transaction.
What I would check first on cheapest option is whether the thing being measured moved or whether the way of measuring it moved. Those look identical in a graph.
Filing a mild objection to the consensus on cheapest option. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit.
Cost per week at a maintenance dose is the figure most people actually want and least often calculate.
Written from notes rather than memory, which is why the numbers are specific.
Cheapest option was covered in the wiki last year and the page has a review date on it, which is a better starting point than my memory of a thread.
Pharmacy acquisition cost: a pharmacy pays less than the patient pays, even at insurance rates. That margin is where the pharmacy's costs and profit live.
It is a small point and it changes the answer, which is an awkward combination.
The claim about cheapest option upthread is stronger than its source supports. I have read the source. The source says "associated with" and the post says "causes".
I read post #18 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Cheapest option is one of those subjects where the general answer and the answer for a specific case diverge, and the thread will go in circles until someone says which one is being asked for.
Post #21 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
The most useful pricing posts here are the ones that show the arithmetic rather than the conclusion.
I have seen it go both ways, which is why I hedge.
I keep a log for cheapest option specifically because my memory of it turned out to be systematically wrong in one direction. Six weeks of notes cost nothing and settled it.
For anyone finding this later: the short answer on cheapest option is that it depends on one thing, and the rest of the thread is people identifying which thing.
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