When billionaire Mark Cuban announced his attack on the pharmaceutical industry and its high-priced drugs in January 2021, it was met with cheers.
His new company — the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co., known as Cost Plus Drugs — has the “lowest prices on meds anywhere,” he said.
The serial entrepreneur and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks made the media rounds evangelizing, getting press via The Wall Street Journal, Time, “The Daily Show,” and many other outlets. He gave colorful quotes along the way, at one point declaring his goal is to “Just f— up the pharmaceutical industry so bad that they bleed.”
His new company, which currently offers over a thousand generic medications, has social media influencers singing his praises: Reality star Kim Kardashian both tweeted and Instagrammed kudos. Former basketballer and Twitter personality Rex Chapman said Cuban was “changing the game of prescription drug prices in America.”
Even a swinger’s forum on Reddit finds much to like about the company’s low prices for Viagra and other meds.
Yet beneath the hype lies a murky reality: In many cases, the price quotes that patients see on the website are higher than they’d get at their local pharmacy. It has to do with the segment Cuban is playing in — generic drugs — but also the layers of complexity peculiar to the American health system.
Right now, his company primarily sells generics, drugs that are no longer protected by patents that could ensure monopoly profits for big pharmaceutical companies. In most cases, it is the lowest-priced part of the pharma economy.
To examine a substantial slice of Cuban’s wares, KHN looked at all the medications and products offered on his site that start with the letter “A,” with each combination of strength, count, or quantity, and type of medication (e.g., capsule, tablet, or chewable gummies) available. It’s a sizable sample: As of early February, it amounted to 211 combinations.
KHN compared the prices for each variety of medication to the prices from other pharmacies for that same medication, as compiled by comparison-shopping discount site …