
Moving to the employer side of healthcare, Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs partners with a PBM
From “Shark Tank” to direct-to-consumer generic drugs, Mark Cuban has made another inroad in the ongoing battle over prescription drug prices. His cost-plus-15% generic drug company, frequently undercutting many competitors, now has its sights set on the employer healthcare market.
Cost Plus Drugs, which originally pledged to cut out PBMs, has now partnered with the PBM EmsanaRx, majority owned by the Purchaser Business Group on Health, to launch a supplemental drug discount program designed specifically for self-funded employers, the company announced Thursday.
The program will provide drug discounts without requiring employees to go outside of their healthcare plans, and it will coordinate with providers on behalf of employees to transfer their medications to the lower-cost option.
“In partnering with Cost Plus Drugs, we will help employers understand where high-cost drugs are a problem in their current benefit design and give them and their employees access to lower-cost alternatives,” EsmanaRx CEO Greg Baker said in a statement.
The partnership marks Cost Plus Drugs’ transition from operating only in the direct-to-consumer market. The shift to the employer healthcare market, which provides health benefits for nearly half of all Americans, could be a key new revenue stream.
“At launch, we are planning as functioning primarily as a 503(b) compounding pharmacy specifically targeting drugs on the FDA shortage list,” CEO Alex Oshmyansky previously told Endpoints News via email. “That will allow us to be more agile and address drug shortages as they arise.”
It’s a shift for the billionaire investor’s company, which began in 2021 as a way to offer cheap drugs directly to consumers.
In addition to the Cuban-backed Dallas manufacturing plant, which Oshmyansky said in January was “about half-way finished with construction,” Cuban is also planning to run his own PBM, as well as a cash-only pharmacy, where consumers can buy more of these cost-plus-15% drugs licensed via the online pharmacy Truepill.
Cuban said his company is committed to transparency by offering generic drugs with a fixed 15% profit after disclosing all costs from the manufacturing, wholesale distribution and online pharmacy services for the products.