Billionaire Mark Cuban Says There’s Just One Question That Matters in Healthcare — And That’s How Do We Pay for People Who Can’t Afford Their Care?

Healthcare reform can get buried in insurance paperwork, hospital bills and pricing formulas. Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban thinks the debate should start with one question: Who pays when patients can’t afford the care they need?

In a January 9, 2025, post on his blog, Maverick website, Cuban wrote, “The ONLY question in healthcare should be ‘How should care for people who can’t afford to pay for their care be paid?’” 

His argument starts with a simpler vision of how healthcare should work. Patients receive care, providers send a bill, and those who can afford it pay. The challenge, in his view, is figuring out how to fund treatment for everyone else without allowing the system’s costs to spiral.

Mark Cuban Wants Healthcare to Be Simpler

Cuban began his post by arguing that healthcare has become unnecessarily complicated in the pursuit of profit.

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“Healthcare is a very simple industry made complicated,” he wrote.

He wasn’t criticizing medical advances or the effort to improve patient care. Instead, he focused on the financial structures surrounding treatment, arguing that complicated pricing and payment systems make healthcare more expensive than it needs to be.

His proposed solution would begin with transparency. Rather than relying on hospital price lists that can obscure the actual cost of treatment, Cuban wants providers to disclose what they pay for the supplies, staff, and services used in patient care.

He also called for publishing healthcare contracts and showing providers’ profit margins separately from their direct costs. That, he argued, would make it easier to compare prices and expose markups that are difficult for patients to understand.

Could Removing Insurance Companies Cut Costs?

Cuban’s proposal goes beyond making hospital bills easier to read. He also wants to remove insurance companies from the payment process for routine care.

“Remove Insurance Companies From the Equation,” he wrote, before proposing that “All Payments are Cash Pay.”

Cuban argued that administering payments, handling collections, and managing disputes between insurers and providers adds substantial costs to the system. He estimated that administrative expenses could account for 20% to 30% of healthcare spending, with additional savings possible by reducing fraud, overbilling, and upcoding.

Using roughly $5 trillion in annual U.S. healthcare spending as his starting point, Cuban calculated that cutting costs by 50% could bring the total down to $2.5 trillion.

That figure is his estimate, not a demonstrated outcome. His calculations depend on broad changes across the industry, and he acknowledged that getting providers to participate would be difficult.

The Question Cuban Still Needs Answered

Even if healthcare costs fell substantially, Cuban’s central question would remain: Who pays for people who cannot afford treatment?

He assumed Medicare and Medicaid would largely stay in place and explored several ways to cover the remaining costs. Employers could redirect money currently spent on insurance premiums, workers could receive higher wages and pay more through taxes, or the federal government could take on a larger role in covering certain medical expenses.

Cuban didn’t present those ideas as a finished plan. He ended his post by inviting readers to challenge his calculations and suggest alternatives.

“The whole point is that if you reduce the top line cost of healthcare expenditures in the USA by changing how we pay for care, making it truly transparent, and aligning the interests of providers, employers and patients, our options expand dramatically,” he wrote.

In Cuban’s eyes, the starting point isn’t another complicated payment formula. It’s deciding how to make care affordable for people who can’t pay for it themselves.

On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.