Mark Cuban's Blueprint for Affordable Healthcare - The Bulwark

[ihaveaquestion]

Dec 30, 2025 Bulwark Takes
Mark Cuban joins Jonathan Cohn to give his take on why America’s healthcare system is broken and what it would take to fix it. Cuban breaks down prescription drug pricing, the role of PBMs, and how his Cost Plus Drug Company is making medications affordable for millions. Cuban also weighs in on system reforms, transparency, and whether U.S. healthcare can ever work for everyone.

[marble falls]

1. Pay for it with a nickle per unit tax on gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol, sugar treats, ammunition, fireworks.

[Trueblue Texan]

2. two things...

1. I wish instead of saying "healthcare is a mess" they would say something more accurate like, "the way we pay for healthcare is a mess that promotes inefficiency, waste, and fraud and exorbitantly overpriced delivery of care."

2. I recently transferred one of my prescriptions to Mark Cuban's Cost Plus drug prescription service. This transfer saved me $47 a month on a single prescription that I need to breathe. The same, non-generic prescription would cost Medicare $400 a month and my insurance will cover it after a large deductible. The generic won't be covered at all. I get it from Cost Plus and can breathe easier in more than one way. Highly recommend this service that saves Medicare dollars as well as my own. I think his thoughts on healthcare are very important.

[FakeNoose]

3. Our healthcare system isn't broken, but the Big Pharma companies have done their best

... to screw everything up and to make it as unaffordable as possible. When life-saving medicines are unaffordable, that's when Americans pony up for expensive, over-priced insurance. It goes hand-in-hand with politicians and lawmakers on the take from Big Pharma and Big Insurance.

That's what is happening HERE and almost nowhere else.



Kudos to MARK CUBAN, who has found a way to cut that fat out of this messed-up delivery system.

[travelingthrulife]

4. This will solve nothing. Just more privatization which causes prices to go up, not down.

[EdmondDantes_]

5. That depends on how much competition there is

The price of computers has dropped dramatically since the 1980s for more speed, storage, portability, etc. The problem with healthcare is there's too little competition or price sensitivity from users (and I'm definitely guilty of that one myself). I just looked up a colonoscopy and the price transparency tool shows a range of several hundred dollars difference for different local providers. Yet when I last needed one, I went through my PCP instead of searching for a cheaper one. But when I want a new tv I wait for it to go on sale. Yes obviously one never needs a tv right away, but I scheduled my colonoscopy several months out because it wasn't an emergency.

Pharmaceuticals are under patent protection, people don't shop around to get a cheaper scan or blood draw because it's convenient to get it done within your provider's office. And I don't blame people for not doing more price conscious work because most people aren't aware enough to know to do so or have the capacity for dealing with the inconvenience if the results aren't sent over or get lost.

Just being a government function doesn't make something cheaper. For example we specifically didn't allow Medicare to negotiate any drug prices which means we've paid way more for drugs than the government should have been.

[TheProle]

7. According to post #2, it solved a $400 a month problem for someone

[Blue Full Moon]

6. All other modern countries have figured out how.

Tax him and the rest of those billionaires