Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs could have saved his NBA team almost $150,000 on medications

Almost a year ago, Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks and celebrity investor on ABC’s Shark Tank, launched an online pharmacy promising affordable prices on prescription medications.

He kept to his promise.

Mark Cuban talked with moderator Emily Ramshaw, co-founder and CEO of The 19th News, during the annual Dallas Regional Chamber meeting Jan. 17, 2023, at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas.

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. has simplified things for nearly 2 million customers, Cuban told a packed crowd at the Dallas Regional Chamber’s 2023 annual meeting Tuesday. The only company Cuban has ever put his name on sells drugs at a flat 15% markup, a $3 pharmacist fee and a $5 fee for shipping.

“Sometimes disruption is just about simplifying,” he said. “The pharmaceutical industry has just morphed into a very complicated industry.”

The company cuts out middlemen and negotiates directly with drug manufacturers and pharmacies for rebates and discounts on behalf of employers, health insurers and government health programs. He said Cost Plus has already signed deals with a few independent pharmacies in Dallas and other cities.

“It took out all the mystery of how drugs are priced,” Cuban said.

It’s a method that could save money for even an NBA team like his Dallas Mavericks.

Mavs CEO Cynt Marshall compiled a list of the generic medications priced over $30 that the team bought in 2021 and 2022. The team spent $165,000. If the team had bought through Cost Plus, it would have cost $19,000, Cuban said.

He also pointed to the Harvard University report published in June that concluded Medicare could have saved $3.6 billion in a single year if it had bought generic drugs from the online pharmacy. And he talked about customers who go on his Twitter account to thank him for their own savings.

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Cuban’s entry into pharmaceuticals began with an often-told story about a “cold email” he got from Alex Oshmyansky wanting to start a small compounding pharmacy. That’s where Cuban learned about the industry. Oshmyansky co-founded the company with Cuban and is now its CEO.

Together, the two have been building a 22,000-square-foot plant in Dallas’ Deep Ellum neighborhood to manufacture drugs. The facility is expected to be completed early this year.

Taking on big pharma would intimidate most others. Cuban said he doesn’t believe there’s any industry that can’t be disrupted. He traces his philosophy to his roots growing up in Pittsburgh, a gritty steel town at the time that’s since been reborn.

“I’ve just been a hustler my entire life,” he said. “Whenever somebody told me I couldn’t do something, I think I got the most joy out of proving them wrong. From that point on, it was always trying to find a way to do things that other people weren’t doing and do it first. ”

Related:Mark Cuban’s key to success: ‘Somebody’s got to be the luckiest guy’

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