Either I don't understand the phrase "Vertical integration" or Mark Cuban doesn't. Cuban says "We basically created a vertically integrated manufacturing company." But, they don't do manufacturing, because later Cuban says "The manufacturers love what we're doing for that reason". They also apparently don't do the pharmacy aspect because Cuban says his company "charges a $3 pharmacy fee to pay the pharmacists it works with".<p>It sounds to me like this is less of a vertically integrated drug manufacturer and more of a website to resell generics at a 15% markup plus pharmacy fee plus shipping and handling.<p>Looking at his website I see a "powered by truepill" logo at the bottom. Truepill seems to be a company that does online pharmacies... So, Cuban Cost Plus is, possibly, a digital storefront for truepill?
On one hand, we should obviously applaud anyone doing anything to bring down drug prices.<p>On the other hand, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with just how much free marketing and PR is being applied to the "Mark Cuban Pharmacy" without much critical examination of what's going on here.<p>Taking one of the examples straight from their homepage: They will sell you 30 Prozac tablets for $3.90: <a href="https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/fluoxetine-10mg-capsule/" rel="nofollow">https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/fluoxetine-10mg-capsul...</a> They list the "Retail price at other pharmacies" as $22.80 and claim to save you $18.90. Fantastic, right?<p>Except nobody should actually be paying $22.80 for generic Prozac. You can drive to any local Walmart and get it for $4 <i>and</i> they will bill your insurance, which will count toward your deductible. (Walmart has a list of their $4 and other cheap prescriptions here: <a href="https://www.walmart.com/cp/4-prescriptions/1078664" rel="nofollow">https://www.walmart.com/cp/4-prescriptions/1078664</a> )<p>Mark Cuban's pharmacy, however, refuses to deal with your insurance and they're going to charge an extra $5.00 shipping at checkout. So now you're paying basically twice as much to Mark Cuban's pharmacy even though they're telling you the entire way that you're actually saving money.<p>I also checked my personal insurance and my negotiated rate for the same medication is also less than $5 at local pharmacies.<p>Now of course it's likely that other drugs will work out to be cheaper on Mark Cuban's pharmacy than any other combination of your personal insurance and local pharmacies, but that's far from guaranteed.<p>I'm concerned that Mark Cuban is capitalizing on people's lack of understanding about how insurance works and how easy it can be to look up drug prices (use your insurance company's website or just pick up the phone and call your pharmacy, they'll check for you). His profit margins, however small, rely on people skipping their insurance and going straight to Mark Cuban's pharmacy. That could be fine in some circumstance, but in others, perhaps many other cases, the customer would come out behind by opting out of their insurance.<p>I wish some media outlets would actually dig into this instead of endlessly recycling the company's own talking points verbatim.
I worked for a PBM back in the 90s. The company, and the whole industry, was/is shady AF.<p>I remember once when I was volun-told to work for new program that handled "rebates". They needed a nerd to support the servers/databases. There was a presentation explaining the program and how it worked. At the conclusion, I asked, "So, this is a kick-back?", and the room went silent. "No, it's not a kick-back. It's a rebate." Hmmm. "Well, it sounds like a kick-back. What's the difference?" We went back-and-forth for a minute or two. Then, finally, some suit spoke up and said "Kick-backs are illegal. Rebates are not." And that was that.<p>So, I applaud Mark Cuban for his efforts here. I hope this succeeds.
"I could make a fortune from this," Mr. Cuban told Texas Monthly last fall. "But I won't. I've got enough money. I'd rather f— up the drug industry in every way possible."<p>Truly hope that's an honest statement, wish them the best if that's the case.
This is just a rant.<p>I want Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, Walmart, all the so called evil multinational corps, billionaires like Cuban, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg & Co. and the the government to get into American healthcare industry and dismantle the multi trillion dollars racket, change it into something functional and useful for the people.<p>I don't care if it will mean millions of people in the insurance, hospital administration, public and private health policies will be out of jobs. Sorry I don't. Also for doctors, medical schools, state medical license issuing bodies, you are gonna allow minimum 10x increase in new doctors entering your field. The gravy train must stop. The system must work for the people, not at the expense of the people.<p>Should it be socialized healthcare or free market healthcare? At this point, I don't care. Anything else is better than this heap of trash. I've experienced both systems in my life and both systems are superior to the American system. But these discussion are distractions to what's really causing the problem in the American health care system. There are trillion dollar protected class of people who make the entire system unworkable. This system needs to collapse and be replaced with something new.
“ People always ask, well why didn't somebody do this before? The reality is there's so much money there, it's hard not to be greedy," Mr. Cuban said on the podcast. "If you get to any scale at all, those PBMs will start throwing money at you and saying, 'Look, just play the game.'" - Isnt this price fixing? AKA an illegal activity in the States?
If you’re on mobile, where the site is a little hard to use, or otherwise prefer to read in plaintext, a plaintext version is at <a href="https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/mark-cuban-s-pharmacy-started-with-a-cold-email.html?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default" rel="nofollow">https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/mark-cuban-s-...</a>
Mark Cuban's program is amazing and revolutionary. I'd love to see more transparency about the manufacturers involved. Katherine Eban's 2019 book Bottle of Lies showed that many major non-US generic drug manufacturers are not subject to rigorous testing or inspection, and several conspired to produce ineffective or dangerous medications.<p>I also learned from that book that generic drugs are not produced by the same process as the brand-name drugs. I thought it was basically an open-sourcing of the drug and it's not that at all. They use the same ingredients, but the generic manufacturers need to reverse-engineer the proprietary manufacturing processes of the big brands, because important details are often deliberately omitted from the patents.
Mark Cuban isn't doing anything Novel here, there were other pharmacies already doing this for years. My family has been using honeybee health for a couple years now and there's blink health and others (no affiliation with these companies)
The prices for these drugs is ridiculous. My kids vere prescribed Ventolin this winter due smog related illnesses. Looking at price of a Ventolin inhaler (90mcg) even on Cuban's website (<a href="https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/albuterol-90mcg-inhaler18g/" rel="nofollow">https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/albuterol-90mcg-inhale...</a>) it costs $43<p>The same thing costs less than $2 in Pakistan for the Glaxo Smith Kline version.
<a href="https://www.emeds.pk/ventolin" rel="nofollow">https://www.emeds.pk/ventolin</a>
You can see the prices on the website:<p><a href="https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/" rel="nofollow">https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/</a><p>A quick search of 2-3 drugs shows it comparable to Goodrx. And with Goodrx I can go to my local pharmacy and get it today.
I recall meeting Oshmyansky when he was pitching Osh's Affordable Pharmaceuticals (I think at a YC interview day). He really has a thing for sketchy sounding names :) but I really admire how driven he is to solve this problem.
There have been plenty of companies that have followed this pattern - GoodRx, SingleCare, ScriptRelief, etc.<p>As others have pointed out, Cuban is basically running a lead gen operation that then services customers drug needs via a white labeled site/fulfillment operation run by TruePill.<p>Any idea who is funding TruePill?<p>One of the largest PBMs in the industry - <a href="https://www.optumventures.com/portfolio/" rel="nofollow">https://www.optumventures.com/portfolio/</a><p>Many ways to make money in pharma!
Likely orthogonal, but it wouldn't surprise me if Brian Cuban's story and battles against substance abuse served as an additional motivator.<p>Brian's pretty public about it. Wrote a whole (and great) book, "The Addicted Lawyer," telling his story in depth. Granted there's nothing Big Pharma in there from what I remember, but I could see me being motivated in a similar direction if a sibling had to fight that fight.
Adding it to the list, someone is going to have to make a meta search engine for online RX<p>So far we have<p><pre><code> goodrx, singlecare, etc.
amazon.com/primerx
walmart.com/pharmacy (walmart.com/cp/pharmacy-mail-order/1042239)
geniusrx.com
ro.co/pharmacy
costplusdrugs.com/medications
</code></pre>
Another aspect is buying a year's worth at a time if it's a daily medication.