Mark Cuban Shares His Plan For Fixing Drug Prices in America | The Real Eisman Playbook Ep 50

Steve Eisman (0:05)

Hi, this is Steve Eisman. Today, I'm going to interview Mark Cuban about the healthcare industry and his private company, Cost Plus. Mark created Cost Plus to tackle a specific problem, the runaway costs of pharmaceuticals, meaning prescription drugs. His solution is to sell prescription drugs at cost plus 15%, which is a huge discount from everyone else's price. As far as I can tell, Cost Plus provides the lowest prices for drugs. I will ask him for his insights into the perverse incentives in our healthcare system and why pharmaceutical prices in the United States are just way too high. This is the third of my interviews focusing on what's wrong with our healthcare industry. Last fall, on September 22nd, I interviewed Michael Ha of Baird for a deep dive into health insurance and why it fails to adequately insure people. On January 12th of this year, I interviewed Warris Bukhari, CEO of a private company called Claimable, and we explored how health insurance companies fail the people they are supposed to care for by denying way too many claims. Warris gave voice to people suffering and dying because of denials. Today, I think we are going to learn a lot about how Mark is helping people by lowering drug costs and creating transparency. I also want to ask Mark about Shark Tank and the Mavericks, and ask him what he learned about those experiences. And after the interview, I'll be back to summarize what I think were the most important points.

Hey, this is Steve Eisman, and welcome to another edition of The Real Eisman Playbook. And today we're going to talk health care. And we're going to talk health care, and the incredible problems we're having in this country with drug pricing, with a very special guest who everybody knows, Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban, welcome to The Real Eisman Playbook.

Mark Cuban (2:09)

Thanks for having me on, Steve.

Steve Eisman (2:11)

So Mark, you have a company called Cost Plus, which I'll let you describe what it is. But the purpose of the company, and I've watched several podcasts of you, is to try and help bring down drug prices, which as we all know, as a country, is an incredible problem. So before you even talk about what your company does, and that in itself is extremely interesting, you did this for a reason, because you see a problem. So define the problem for us. And when you're defining the problem, I want you to also to address something that you said in a podcast where you said that doctors, hospitals, and other providers are being forced into the role of subprime lenders, which is part of the problem. So let's talk about the problem. Mark, you saw a problem. What's the problem?

Mark Cuban (2:57)

The problem is people are okay with their doctors and trust their doctors and nurses. But when it comes to the economics of health care, everybody hates it. Nobody thinks about the cost of paying for their prescription or getting care at a hospital and thinks, OK, I can afford this. This is no problem at all. It's all going to work out just fine. Everybody's terrified of that medical bill.

And so many people have been saddled with incredible amounts of debt as a result of that care. And so what we set out to do was to change that, starting with pharmacy. And when you think about health care, when you get a prescription, the doctor doesn't say, can you afford it? Or here's what it's going to cost. Here's different pricing and different options. They basically just ask you, hey, what pharmacy do you use?

Steve Eisman (3:47)

Right, and they just call and you get the drug and then you get, at some point, get a bill.

Mark Cuban (3:51)

Right, or you have to pay your co-pay or co-insurance, or if you're underinsured or not insured, you have to pay the full price right there at the counter. And we've all seen or heard stories of somebody having to walk away because they couldn't afford their medication or having to ration their medication or just not even take it because they can't afford it. So we created costplusdrugs.com with the idea of when you go to costplusdrugs.com, we want you to know exactly what your medications are going to cost. So you go to us, you put in the name of the medication. We don't carry everything because there's some companies that still won't sell to us.

Steve Eisman (4:29)

You're mostly generic and biosimilars at this point.

Mark Cuban (4:31)

Generic biosimilars. And we've got a growing amount of brands, but we don't have every brand.

Steve Eisman (4:35)

Okay.