Mark Cuban launched Cost Plus Drugs after Republican friends asked for an alternative to Obamacare
What inspired Shark Tank star and billionaire Mark Cuban to launch his pharmaceutical company, Cost Plus Drugs, was conversations with politicians about a contentious topic: Obamacare.
"Going back to 2018 or 2017, being here in Texas, I had some Republican friends who were asking me questions like, 'Do you have any ideas how the Republicans can replace the ACA, Obamacare?'" Cuban told the hosts of the "Hims House" podcast on Tuesday.
At the time he said he didn’t, but that got Cuban curious. He told them, “Let me see if I can come up with some ideas.”
“The ideas, you know, never got that far, but it really…turned me into a healthcare geek," Cuban said.
Back in 2017, Cuban even wrote a post on his personal site, Blog Maverick, outlining how he would like to see the healthcare system change.
“Some of us do our best to afford the least expensive health care insurance with high deductibles and lie to ourselves that we will be able to save enough to cover the deductible or we can keep enough open on our credit cards to survive a disaster,” Cuban wrote. “Unfortunately, when disaster hits, we rarely have enough.”
In his post, Cuban explained that everyone should be covered “100%” for chronic physical or mental illness, or any life-threatening injury.
On the podcast, Cuban recounted how he went down the rabbit hole of calling hospitals, asking their workers if they knew the cash prices of drugs. Cuban soon discovered that not only did they not know, but many workers were largely unaware of healthcare costs on the whole.
“A lot of hospitals don’t even understand the true cost to offer a procedure,” he said on the podcast.
"It became very obvious the more I dug in, that there was zero transparency, no transparency, and that there were a lot of vested interests that wanted opacity,” Cuban said. “They want it to be as opaque as possible so that people can't make good decisions when it comes to their healthcare."
Cost Plus Drugs was born
In 2022, Cost Plus Drugs was up and running, with its main mission to make medications more affordable and create more transparency about drug pricing. On their website, the company claims they keep costs low by sourcing drugs directly from manufacturers and eliminating the extra fees from pharmaceutical middlemen. Cuban’s company lets customers know they’re paying a 15% markup to Cost Plus Drugs, plus a $5 labor charge for each medication and $5 for shipping.
“We started shipping in January 2022, and here we are three years later, and our growth has been insane,” Cuban said.
Cuban expressed excitement for President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to limit drug costs to what other countries pay and cut prices 30% to 80%. "Gotta be honest. The @realDonaldTrump EO on healthcare and in particular, drug pricing could save hundreds of billions," Cuban wrote on X in April. He added that he’d be willing to offer support to continue making drugs cheaper, writing, “Put me in coach ! I’m here to help.”
For more on the pharmaceutical industry:
- Patients will pay more for prescription meds and face drug shortages amid Trump tariffs, pharma groups warn
- Gen Z’s expensive drug habit: More want brand-name meds that are 79% more expensive
- Mark Cuban warns Trump’s tariffs mean his Cost Plus Drugs ‘won’t have a choice’ but to raise prices for consumers
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com