Cuban just cut the price of one of the most expensive drugs in the world<\/strong><\/p>\n ![\"Mark]()
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Mark Cuban is a serial entrepreneur and former Shark Tank “shark.” “I’ve always been a disruptor and nobody likes healthcare,” he told Business Insider.<\/p>\n
Disney\/Christopher Willard<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Cuban’s pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs, announced it was driving down the cost of a brand-name injectable for autoimmune conditions called Stelara from roughly $80,000 a year to about $1,400 for a new generic version, Starjemza.<\/p>\n
This is the latest in Cuban’s mission to cut PBMs \u2014 “pharmacy benefit managers” \u2014 out of the equation in US healthcare.<\/p>\n
PBMs negotiate with drug manufacturers to bring drugs into their “formularies” and get them covered for patients. It’s an opaque dealmaking process that results in wildly different prices depending on your insurance.<\/p>\n
That’s why it is difficult for consumers to know exactly how much they might pay for their prescriptions until they step up to the cash register.<\/p>\n
Cuban says the trend of skipping PBMs, as he and Trump are both doing, brings pharmacies like Cost Plus closer to his ultimate goal of having every brand-name medication for sale on the shelf, with a clear price tag.<\/p>\n
“It’s not that the brands don’t want to sell to us,” Cuban said \u2014 it’s that they’re used to selling through middlemen. “Now, with direct-to-consumer happening more and more, or farm-to-table, I think that’s going to start to change.”<\/p>\n
Drugmakers can actually ‘make more money’ this way, Cuban said<\/strong><\/p>\n ![\"ozempic\"\/]()
<\/p>\n
Ozempic can cost anywhere from over $1,000 to a $25, depending on how you pay for it.<\/p>\n
Peter Dazeley\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk were both at the White House on Thursday to announce the deal, made possible in part because they are both investing billions ($27 billion for Lilly, $20 billion for Novo) in US manufacturing.<\/p>\n
“That’s all? That’s peanuts,” Trump said of their US manufacturing investments.<\/p>\n
The real reason they are willing to sell their GLP-1 drugs at dramatically lower prices and still make a profit, Cuban said, is because TrumpRx, like Cost Plus, eliminates the PBMs.<\/p>\n
Already, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have established their own websites for selling GLP-1 drugs direct to consumers, at around $350-500 per month, depending on the dose. That’s not exactly cheap, but it was already more than 50% off the list price.<\/p>\n
“The big brand pharmaceutical manufacturers recognize they make more money with net pricing,” Cuban said. “That’s why Lilly and Novo do their direct thing, and it’s half the price, or less than half the price, of what a corporate sponsor is paying for their GLP-1, even after rebates.”<\/p>\n
“We’re having a lot of really good conversations” directly with pharmaceutical brands, Cuban said.<\/p>\n
Correction: A previous headline suggested Ozempic will cost $150 through TrumpRx. Only oral GLP-1 pills will cost $150. Most injectables will start at $250.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When President Trump told an audience in October that he hoped to cut the cost of Ozempic down…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":362585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[175860,4381,175862,13332,3853,25996,210,1141,1142,26878,3235,9412,175861,11463,175859,1807,13331,175858,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-362584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-big-glp-1-drug","9":"tag-business-insider","10":"tag-clear-price-tag","11":"tag-cost","12":"tag-deal","13":"tag-eli-lilly","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-health-care","16":"tag-healthcare","17":"tag-mark-cuban","18":"tag-medicare","19":"tag-novo-nordisk","20":"tag-ozempic-cost","21":"tag-pbm","22":"tag-pharmacy-cost","23":"tag-president-trump","24":"tag-price","25":"tag-right-thursday","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-unitedstates","28":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115509447059597021","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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