Patients look to physicians to find lower-cost drugs, survey finds

Price uncertainty and the lack of information on safety risks have caused frustration for patients, leading to mistrust, according to a survey conducted by RazorMetrics, a technology solution provider.

Among the 1,000 insured U.S. adults nationwide who were surveyed by RazorMetrics, more than half do not trust that they are paying the lowest available price, and among those who report price confusion, 68% do not trust pricing outcomes. Additionally, nearly half of respondents said they find patient-driven healthcare apps and discount platforms hard to navigate, with many describing the process as overwhelming or inconsistent.

Patients will not trust the healthcare system until they believe it is actively working on their behalf behind the scenes and not just providing them with tools and information, and then leaving them to fend for themselves, Siva Mohan, M.D., cofounder, president and chief medical officer at RazorMetrics, said in an interview.

“The pharmacy system repeatedly asks patients to adapt to its complexity, while patients consistently ask the system to absorb it,” he said.

The results are from RazorMetrics’ 2026 State of Drug Access survey, now in its fourth year. The survey finds that 84% of patients want their own physician to automatically select the lowest-cost medication. That number, Mohan noted, has held steady year over year.

“The patient should not bear the responsibility, nor the burden, of cost-optimizing the medications in their own panel,” he said. “The system in pharmacy is even more complex than the rest of medicine, and it’s always asking patients to absorb that complexity.”

But physicians often don’t know the prices their patients will see at the pharmacy counter. Mohan described a common scenario: a patient arrives at the pharmacy counter, gets a price they can’t afford, and then faces a series of calls to their doctor and insurance company that still may not resolve the problem. Additionally, 40% of those surveyed report that prior authorization delays or denials.

In the survey, 80% of respondents said they face cost pressures when drugs reach $250; 16% of report leaving prescriptions unfilled or rationing medications.

RazorMetric’s technology connects physicians to plan-level information on the pharmacy benefit within the electronic health record. Although the system does not display the actual price a patient will see, it offers prescribers a list of clinically equivalent alternatives at a lower tier. By operating inside clinical workflows and focusing on formulary optimization, RazorMetrics reduces price uncertainty and minimizes friction.

In the survey, the company found that discount cards are a workaround for many patients, with 42% using them sometimes. But more than 55% said it was difficult to find a lower-cost option, and 55% said they don’t trust that they are paying the lowest price.

Mohan said it’s not reasonable to expect patients to bear the responsibility for finding the lowest price medication. “The system is quite complex,” he said. “The system in pharmacy is even more complex, and we’re always asking the patients to absorb that complexity, and they’re simply not able to.”

The survey suggests that pharmacy solutions, including apps and discount cards, that rely on patients’ initiation often fail and lead to nonadherence. “There’s a lot of hubbub about the patient-initiated [discount programs], and these are becoming more prominent. But the integrated discount card that is coordinated by the payer and the health plan takes complexity away from the patient, and they’re saving money.