The ongoing debate over the U.S. health system shouldn’t be based on whether the government or the private sector is the dominant player, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said this week. The bigger issue, he said, is whether the system’s participants are transparent about what they charge and what they pay.
“I’m not opposed to single-payer or universal healthcare at all,” Cuban said Aug. 18 in an interview with KFF Health News. But “when you don’t know all the costs, when there’s no transparency, it’s impossible to determine if it’s a better solution or not,” he said.
Cuban’s remarks came on the heels of primary election victories by progressive supporters of “Medicare for All” — most notably Abdul El-Sayed, who recently clinched the Democratic Senate nomination in Michigan.
The former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a former investor on the hit TV show Shark Tank, Cuban changed the way generic prescription drugs are sold in 2022 by co-founding Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs. The website, which posts all its costs and takes a blanket 15% markup, sells thousands of medications, often at deep discounts compared with buying through private insurance plans or self-pay pharmacies.
