Businessman Mark Cuban is making it his “mission” to shake up U.S. well being care.
Cuban is thought for proudly owning the Dallas Mavericks and for his function as an angel investor on the ABC actuality TV present “SharkTank.”
He hasn’t shied away from the political area as a distinguished critic of President Trump. However Cuban says he has little interest in operating for greater workplace, opting as an alternative to disrupt well being care.
“If I could change health care in this country, that would be amazing,” Cuban mentioned in an interview for The Hill’s “Health Next Summit.”
For Cuban, that begins together with his firm Price Plus Medicine, which launched in 2022 with the objective of pharmacies leapfrogging intermediary wholesalers.
“I’m not saying I’m going to be able to pull it off, but I know we’ve had a significant impact with CostPlusDrugs.com, and I think getting there and focusing on that and just changing people’s lives for the better on the health care side, that’s my mission,” he mentioned.
Cuban says the corporate carries over 2,500 drugs, and that when clients sort within the title of a medicine they instantly see its precise value adopted by the mark-up, which is all the time 15 p.c. The businessman mentioned the corporate’s transparency is what units it other than its opponents, which embrace Amazon Prime, Costco and GoodRX.
“As crazy as it sounds, we are the only company that publishes their entire price list,” he mentioned.
Nonetheless, Cuban mentioned Price Plus Medicine has run into the roadblock of pharmacy profit managers, also called PBMs. These are the middlemen that handle drug protection for companies throughout the U.S. PBMs and model drug producers negotiate reductions within the type of rebates, and the PBM then passes many of the rebates on to employers.
Critics argue PBMs don’t all the time discover the very best offers and are forcing unbiased drug shops out of enterprise by not paying them sufficient to cowl their prices. The PBM business, then again, mentioned PBMs save employers and sufferers billions on drug prices.
“When we talk to manufacturers and we say, look, why can’t we get in the same rebate programs as these big PBMs, they tell us without telling us that they don’t want to lose their position on the formulary, which is hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in sales,” Cuban mentioned.
“The big PBMs just won’t let them deal with us. That is our problem. Period. End of story,” he added.
However Cuban mentioned he and his group are slowly making progress via going to drug producer CEOs and dealing with pass-through PBMs, which eradicate reductions, rebates and charges on to the payer.
“All of the rebates are passed through so you actually get significant savings, and slowly but surely we’re having inroads,” he mentioned.
Cuban can also be touting the corporate’s partnership with unbiased pharmacies via paying them a $12 fill charge per prescription, totally reimbursing the pharmacy and permitting them to make a revenue.
“I want independent pharmacies to stay in business,” Cuban mentioned. “I think as a country, we don’t want to see pharmacy deserts. We need them to stay in business. All those people, senior citizens that have been going to the same pharmacist for decades and that pharmacist knows them, they know their family, that’s important. That saves lives.”
“The problem is that the biggest PBMs won’t fully reimburse,” he mentioned.
Cuban argued that Price Plus Medicine would have the ability to dramatically lower the price of model medicine if the pharmaceutical business permits the corporate to take part in rebate packages.
“The amount of money that we can save taxpayers and patients will be, to paraphrase, like you’ve never seen before. Most in history ever,” he mentioned, showing to imitate Trump.
Cuban says he’s hopeful the Trump administration will work to decrease costs via the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers (CMS) and Well being and Human Providers Division (HHS). Nonetheless, he added that he believes Republicans have been afraid to work with him, notably from the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE).
Cuban described the method of the Trump administration and DOGE head Elon Musk as “ready, aim, fire,” which he added “isn’t any solution to govern.
“Particularly when the you know what, you know, rolls downhill onto the small-to-medium-sized communities and cities where all of a sudden, who knows how many people are losing jobs, who knows how many companies have to close, because their grants have been cut, and who knows the impact on that community in terms of services they’re going to be able to offer, raising taxes,” he mentioned.
The businessman is without doubt one of the most outspoken critics of Trump from the enterprise group, and opted to marketing campaign with then-Vice President Harris final 12 months.
Cuban mentioned he doesn’t notably care about the way forward for the Democratic Celebration due to his standing as an Unbiased. Nonetheless, he inspired Democrats to enter communities to get a way of Trump’s tariffs and DOGE cuts are taking part in out regionally.
“You’re not going to get people to all of the sudden turn on Donald Trump, but what you can do, as we’ve seen with some of the town halls, is get people to turn on some of the Republican House members who are going to have to make a really tough choice,” he mentioned.
“If their communities are being negatively impacted by the all at once cuts of DOGE and the impact of the tariffs, well put the pressure on those House Republicans to make a choice. Either you support Donald Trump or you go against Donald Trump and say these tariffs and these cuts are awful for my town or you lose your job,” he mentioned.
“What the Democrats must be doing somewhat than yelling at Donald Trump “I might go to the native communities
