Who writes and maintains RxTrueCost

Who's behind this site

RxTrueCost is written and maintained by the Das Creative Data Desk, the editorial name for Das Creative LLC. We're a small US-based data operation. We build pipelines that pull from public data sources and turn them into something readable.

This site runs on one source: the weekly CMS NADAC file. NADAC stands for National Average Drug Acquisition Cost. It's a public dataset that estimates what pharmacies pay to acquire drugs, based on invoice data collected from a sample of retail pharmacies.

We don't collect our own pricing data. We don't survey pharmacies. We take the CMS file as published, process it, and present it in a format that's easier to search and read than the raw government file.

What we are not

We want to be direct about this: nobody on our team is a pharmacist, physician, or licensed clinician. We're a data and editorial group, not a medical practice.

That's not a footnote. It's the reason this site is built the way it is. Because we don't have clinical staff, we don't write about dosage, indications, drug interactions, or effectiveness. We don't offer medical advice in any form. If you're looking for guidance on whether a medication is right for you, talk to a pharmacist or your doctor. That's not something a pricing dataset or a small data team can answer.

Everything on RxTrueCost stays in one lane: what pharmacies pay to acquire a drug, according to CMS. We also keep that acquisition cost separate from retail price. What a pharmacy pays and what you pay at the counter are two different numbers, shaped by different forces. We try never to blur that line, and we never promise or imply a specific dollar amount you'll save. Savings depend on your plan, your pharmacy, and factors we don't have visibility into.

How the data moves from CMS to this site

Each week, we pull the current NADAC file, run it through our processing pipeline, and update the price pages here. The pipeline checks for formatting issues and obvious anomalies before publishing, but it doesn't re-verify CMS's underlying numbers. We're a step downstream of the source, not an independent auditor of it.

If CMS revises or corrects a prior week's file, we reflect that in the next update. We don't retroactively edit historical snapshots unless there's a reason tied to accuracy.

Correction policy

Mistakes happen, especially at this scale. If an error is traced back to something in the source CMS file itself, our practice is:

• We fix the display on our end where possible, or note that the source data is under CMS review.
• We add a visible note on the affected page describing what changed and why.
• We do not quietly delete or rewrite history. If a number was wrong for a period of time, we say so.

If you spot something that looks off, whether it's a formatting bug on our end or a number that seems inconsistent with the CMS file, you can flag it. We review reports and correct genuine errors. We don't guarantee a turnaround time, but we do take data accuracy seriously since it's the entire premise of this site.

Why this structure

We built RxTrueCost around a narrow claim: read the CMS acquisition cost data and present it clearly. We're not trying to be a clinical resource, a pharmacy locator, or a source of medical guidance. Staying narrow is what lets us stay accurate. A small team covering one dataset well beats a small team trying to cover everything.