'Healthcare Companies Are Too Big To Care,' Says Mark Cuban. 'The Sicker You Are, The More That Goes To Your CEO's Balance Sheet'

Mark Cuban isn't letting up on his criticism of the U.S. healthcare system. The billionaire entrepreneur and founder of online pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs slammed high-deductible insurance plans and the companies that profit from them. His message is that everyday Americans are getting squeezed while executives cash in.

Deductibles Are Draining Patients

“This is your reminder that all those people who had to switch to lower premium, higher deductible plans, will now be paying full retail price on their brand and specialty drugs for LONGER,” Cuban wrote in a post on X this week. “Their deductibles went up, costing them thousands of dollars a year more.”

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Cuban said these higher costs aren't just hitting individuals. In aggregate, “patients may be paying billions of dollars more.”

He said that under Affordable Care Act plans, the rebates from drugs purchased before deductibles are met often go to pharmacy benefit managers owned by the same insurance companies. In employer plans, it gets worse: “If your deductible went up, and it probably did, the in-deductible rebates are going right to your company’s and the PBM’s bank account.”

“The bigger your deductible, the sicker you are, the more that goes to your CEO’s balance sheet,” he added.

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Cuban ended the post with a clear call: “It’s time to change healthcare. These healthcare companies are too big to care.”

System Rigged Against Patients

Just before Christmas, Cuban said overbilling, denials of care, and misleading out-of-pocket estimates have become standard practice. “If we fined insurers and providers $100 every time they over-billed, incorrectly denied care or misrepresented any amount of patient out of pocket, we could pay off the national debt,” he wrote on X.

He called for major structural reforms. “Break them up. Make them divest non-insurance companies,” he wrote. “And when we are done with the insurance companies, we go to the hospitals and then to the pharma wholesalers. Break ’em up. Make the markets efficient again.”

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Consumers Want Access, Not Just Promises

Some critics argued that patients can’t reasonably shop for healthcare in a system designed to confuse and overwhelm. Cuban disagreed, pointing to his own work at Cost Plus Drugs. “It happens already. I email and talk to people who buy from Cost Plus all the time, Cuban replied. “I pay deductibles for people all the time. I help people get their [prior authorizations] overturned. All the time. The hardest part is having them count against their deductible.”

Cuban’s message highlights how powerful systems often reward insiders while locking everyone else out. That same issue exists in venture capital, where regular investors were excluded for years.

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