Mark Koban’s war on a 5 trillion dollar health care machine: “They cannot respond quickly”

The billionaire and investor entrepreneur Mark Koban believes that the American health care industry in America is broken, and he is not empty of words on this topic.

“This is the way of health care,” Kobe said in this week’s episode. justice Podcast. “When you go to the doctor and get a prescription … you have no idea about the cost you will be. You don’t know whether you can bear it or not.”

The former “Shark Tank” host and the minority owner of the basketball team in Dallas Maverx, the root root of the problem, explained: Most of the drug prices are determined today by pharmacy allocations (PBMS), or third parties running prescribed pharmaceutical programs. Cuban said the prices of drugs are not transparent according to the design.

This is exactly the reason for its launch Cost in addition to medications in 2022 – To recover the curtain on drug prices, reduce costs to the normal consumer, and disrupt the traditional pharmacy industry.

“They are proud of the market, we are the cost,” he said.

The difference is shocking. For example, general chemotherapy may cost thousands across the table in a pharmacy, while it may cost “$ 21 of cost in addition to medications.”

The Cuban approach is very different from how to traditionally pricing medicines in the United States as its name suggests, as Cost Plus Drugs Meds sells directly to consumers at a transparent price – the cost of the manufacturer, in addition to coding by 15 %, in addition to pharmacy fees worth $ 5, in addition to shipping.

“We add the ability to receive it in a local pharmacy.”

To understand the reason to give the Cuban model, it helps to know the reason for the cost of medications a lot in the first place. The industry defended its exercise of excessive charging of the drug in the United States-which is one of the only high-income countries whose government does not determine or negotiate drug prices-by saying that without the incentive of high profits, companies have not been able to invest billions of dollars needed to bring new drugs to the market.

But critics argue that prices have been appointed to increase profit and are not directly related to the costs of research and development. one 2021 studies I found that revenues of the best 20 -selling drugs alone were sufficient for companies to give a return from research and development costs with the remaining billions.

Kobe also pointed to another reason that the prices of drugs rise in the United States: artificial shortage. “Believe it or not, on this day and this era, there are things like children’s cancer medications, ptenocoin, and sterile water, (and) this long list of medicines that I can not even pronounce properly, which are in mind because manufacturers want them to rise, because this is what raises the price,” said the Cuban.

While there is a limited direct evidence of the deliberate supply, it is correct to do so During the shortagePrices It increases dramatically.

His answer? Building his own factory. CUBAN has a Dallas manufacturing factory, “All Robots are paid”.

“We have created this factory where we can deliver a new medicine in four hours and ship it to hospitals,” he said. “Thus we started attacking that deficiency.”

While charging drugs for patients has shaving margins, other aspects of cost in addition to medications, such as manufacturing medications, are more profitable and help work to work towards profitability. Manufacturing is also another way to challenge drug supply chain.

But the Cuban strategy goes beyond merely providing cheaper medications – he says he refuses to play with rules completely. “Everyone was saying … you could not fight these major companies, insurance companies, pbms,” he said. “I love,” well, I just will not work with them. I will not work the way they want to do, because this is not the best alignment of patients. “

Even the Amazon, note the Cuban, fell into this trap. TECH GINT has made a partnership with PBMS through the Amazon Pharmacy, but this puts the large technology company in a non -favorable position because it is still “full of PBMS”.

His advice to the founders trying to download job occupants?

“Do not rely on them,” he said. “Because if I am twenty -five years old and start this work, I may work through pharmacy allocations because this is the place where the money is. All health care is basically arbitration. How can I get a small percentage of a market worth $ 5 trillion through technology and prices, whatever it is?”

“When I started, someone told me this:” When you run with the elephants, there is fast and death. “You should be fast, or you will die, so you should be meager, meaning that you should be able to adapt. You should always be able to zigzag, zig and search for ways to do better, as it is considered the entire innovative dilemma of speed (they cannot interact to that. “