With his new company, Mark Cuban wants to disrupt big pharma by offering medicines for a much more affordable price. But will it work?
The leukemia treatment Imatinib runs upwards of $9,500 per month. A common voucher might bring that down to $120, while Cuban’s company lowers the price to $47.Mark Cuban’s new online pharmacy is slashing drug prices for 100 different generic medications. Its main goal is affordability for consumers, and some thinkCost Plus Drug ditches the middleman, the pharmacy benefit management companies. Those help negotiate benefits for employers, health insurers and government health programs.
“The biggest, most inflationary thing we see in healthcare overall right now is drugs,” said Paul Segeert, managing partner at the healthcare consulting company PCS Advisers. “It’ll continue to be the case unless we do something about it.” “The original intent of these pharmacy benefit managers was that they would be the experts in a complicated business model that would advocate on behalf of payers, plan sponsors and members to get more values,” Segeert explained. “Yet, they also were allowed to operate without transparency and their business model put them in a position where they make more money when the cost of drugs increases.
He said said he thinks sometimes these big players find out there’s more money to be made in the traditional model and follow suit.ScriptCo is a membership-based online pharmacy that’s been operating out of Waco since 2019. They provide thousands of medications and sell them at wholesale price with no markup. They only make revenue off of the membership fees, which cost $140 a year or $50 a quarter.
Despite this and the fact that Cuban is now somewhat of a competitor, Zeller said he’s glad the Dallas Mavericks owner is stepping into the industry. Zeller thinks this will force the middlemen out or force them to be more transparent.
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