Billionaire Mark Cuban’s 5-step plan to make healthcare affordable targets drug middlemen’s ‘contractual terrorism’
The Cost Plus Drugs cofounder told Texas lawmakers that insured patients are often better off paying cash—and laid out five fixes built around price transparency.
Mark Cuban says many of the customers flooding his low-cost pharmacy have something in common: They already have insurance. And they’re still better off paying cash.
“They come to us because our cash price is often lower than what their insurance plan asks them to pay,” Cuban told Texas House lawmakers on Sept. 1. “That tells you something is wrong.”
The billionaire Cost Plus Drugs cofounder and former Shark Tank star used the hearing to prescribe five steps to fix America’s healthcare affordability crisis , which has left a record 51% of U.S. adults unable to reliably afford quality care, according to West Health-Gallup. Many of his remedies share a common active ingredient: transparency.
Cuban’s crusade on drug prices has made for strange bedfellows. In May, TrumpRx, the White House-backed discount drug site, added more than 600 generic medications through Cost Plus Drugs, alongside Amazon Pharmacy and GoodRx. The deal put Cuban on the same side as President Donald Trump, who called him “a loser” during the 2024 campaign.
Cuban also threw his support in March behind the Break Up Big Medicine Act from another odd couple: Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The bill would bar a single company from owning both an insurer or PBM and medical providers. It has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee and hasn’t advanced, but Cuban has kept pressing the case, recently arguing that rising healthcare costs, not AI, are the real threat to American jobs.
