How Much You Can Save on Prescriptions Using Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs
Written by
Andrew Lisa
Edited by
Levi Leidy
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Mark Cuban is best known for basketball and billions, but lately, the long-time “Shark Tank” veteran, social media influencer and regular TV personality has been focused on healthcare. He created Cost Plus Drugs to reduce the price of prescriptions and bring transparency to an industry notorious for confusing, inconsistent billing structures and opaque pricing.
Here’s a look at how much you might save on your prescriptions if you bought them directly from Cuban’s latest entrepreneurial endeavor.
How Is Cost Plus Different?
Cuban told New York Magazine’s Intelligencer that, unlike hospitals, which the law now requires to state procedure pricing on their websites, pharmacies are not obligated to provide any such disclosures regarding prescriptions. He and a doctor co-founded Cost Plus to counter the industry standard of what Cuban called “zero transparency” in pharmaceutical pricing.
Its cost structure is the same for every drug. Cost Plus lists its wholesale purchase price for each prescription it offers, adds a 15% markup and — often but not always — adds a $5 pharmacy handling fee. Shipping is a flat rate of $5.
Potential Savings With Cost Plus
Here’s an estimate of what five popular drugs would cost at a retail pharmacy, through Cost Plus and with the popular GoodRx telemedicine platform.
Fluoxetine (Generic for Prozac), 30-Count 10mg
- Retail price: $22.80
- Cost Plus: $5.37
- GoodRx: $23.78
Rosuvastatin (Generic for Crestor) 30-Count 5mg
- Retail price: $133.50
- Cost Plus: $5.45
- GoodRx: $13.71
Atorvastatin (Generic for Lipitor) 30-Count 80mg
- Retail price: $70.20
- Cost Plus: $6.32
- With GoodRx: $28.37
Lisinopril (Generic for Prinivil) 30-Count 5mg
- Retail price: $26.10
- Cost Plus: $5.29
- GoodRx: $11.92
Metformin (Generic for Glucophage) 30-Count 850mg
- Retail price: $30.90
- Cost Plus: $5.55
- With GoodRx: $27.13
The Insurance Co-Pay Wildcard
Platforms like GoodRx can dramatically reduce the cost of prescriptions for patients without insurance, and as the previous examples show, you might do much better with Cost Plus — but paying for prescription drug coverage changes the dynamic and adds many new variables to consider.
Insurance co-pays vary considerably by provider, plan and drug tier, and they can be a fixed amount or a percentage of the cost.
With so many variables, there is no way to say universally that insurance coverage is more or less expensive than Cost Plus. However, a 2024 study of 844 million prescription pharmacy fills for 124 generic medications, published in the JAMA Health Forum, found that insurance is usually the most cost-effective option.
Among those with insurance, Cuban’s platform lowered out-of-pocket costs for only:
- 9.9% of military (TRICARE or VA) fills
- 7.1% of private insurance fills
- 5.5% of Medicare fills
- 0% of Medicaid fills
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