When Mark Cubano feels spicy, will always let you know. THE billionaire businessmanbasketball owner, and Shark tank The impresario lit up WIRED’s The Big Interview event on Tuesday, dropping interesting takes Elon Muskthe pharmaceutical industry, and why he thinks Gary Gensler’s “couch fucking” and crypto policies cost Kamala Harris the election.
Chatting with WIRED senior writer Lauren Goode, Cuban touted the trajectory of Cost Plus Drugs, the pharmaceutical company he co-founded in 2022. By offering transparency into costs and pricing policies, Cuban says his company has been able to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry by offering consumers drugs they like Droxidepa for something like $20 a month versus the more than $3,000 a month that uninsured patients were quoted.
“We lowered the price of (one of our 2,500 drugs) every day of the week for 18 months,” Cuban boasted, saying the company has also found great success in publishing its entire price list, something it always been incredibly difficult to obtain from other drug suppliers for both consumers and researchers.
Now, Cuban says, studies have emerged showing that if Medicare purchased, for example, nine specific drugs from Cost Plus Drugs instead of other sources, the government would save billions of dollars, which not only demonstrates the greed of the health care system , but also the tangible effect that a well-funded company can have.
It’s not even that Cuban doesn’t make money on Cost Plus drugs, because he does. It could do Moreoverhe told Goode, but as he said, “How much fucking money do I need? I’m not trying to land on Mars.”
The crack, allegedly directed at Elon Musk, was just one of many comments made by Cuban regarding the billionaire owner of overall existential moment for Musk’s platform.
Thanks to Bluesky’s troll-blocking capabilities and what Cuban calls more engagement-friendly policies, he says he’s found it much easier to engage there, whether it’s with Kamala Harris, cryptocurrency or the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, whose owns a minority share. “If you want to know what Elon thinks, Twitter is great,” Cuban joked, but added that he thinks Bluesky is more of a real “social network” in comparison.
Mark Cuban and Lauren Goode at the big interviewPhotography: Tristan de Brauwere
