The drug-sales entrepreneur told the Silicon Slopes Summit crowd that those firms \u201cgame the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mark Cuban of Cost Plus Drugs, center, and Chris Klomp, a top Medicare administrator, speak during the Silicon Slopes Summit at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026.<\/p>\n
Mark Cuban issued a challenge for President Donald Trump\u2019s administration: Break up the biggest health-insurance companies. <\/p>\n
Such a move, Cuban said, would make \u201chealth care costs drop like that,\u201d while snapping his fingers. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have so much control,\u201d he said during a Friday morning conversation with a top Medicare official during the Silicon Slopes Summit<\/a>. Making them divest from subsidiaries would make costs \u201cdrop like a rock.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuban and Chris Klomp, the deputy administrator for Medicare at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, discussed what\u2019s wrong with the health care system and what could lower costs for Americans. <\/p>\n The banter \u2013 and sometimes jockeying for a word in \u2013 between the two mirrored phone conversations they\u2019ve been having since Klomp saw one of Cuban\u2019s posts to X, they said. Klomp set the tone early by presenting Cuban, who is 67 years old, with a Medicare insurance card the size of a giant donation check. <\/p>\n (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mark Cuban of Cost Plus Drugs, center, and Chris Klomp, a top Medicare administrator, discuss drug pricing during the Silicon Slopes Summit at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026.<\/p>\n Cuban and Klomp talked about their entrepreneurial beginnings \u2013 like first jobs selling garbage bags<\/a> door-to-door, or selling sloppy Joes at a state fair \u2013 before shifting to prescription medications. <\/p>\n Cuban founded Cost Plus Drugs<\/a> in 2022 to sell prescription drugs directly to consumers with a small markup. That can save customers a lot of money. In one Cost Plus example<\/a>, a 30-count supply of 250 milligrams of Azithromycin, commonly known as Z-Pack, sells for $9.37, when it retails at most pharmacies for about $150. <\/p>\n Klomp touted a new government version of that program, TrumpRx.gov<\/a>, enabling people to buy some brand-name drugs directly from manufacturers. <\/p>\n Such programs are important because big insurance companies \u201chave more control than Chris or President Trump have over drug prices,\u201d Cuban said. <\/p>\n They own the biggest pharmacy benefit <\/a>managers<\/a>, he said. Those middlemen manage prescription benefits, including negotiating discounts and processing pharmacy claims. <\/p>\n They also often introduce extra costs, Cuban said, and insurance companies find ways to make money when they can\u2019t do it via the PBMs. <\/p>\n \u201cThey know how to game the system faster and better than we can respond,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The opacity around drug pricing, Cuban said, has led to a lack of trust<\/a> in the system. <\/p>\n His own companies no longer deal with big insurance firms, he said. Instead, they contract directly with providers \u2014 and they\u2019ve posted a blueprint<\/a> for others to do the same. <\/p>\n Klomp said that the Trump administration is also pushing for more transparency. He hopes that lawmakers, who already have imposed new restrictions<\/a> on some of the most controversial drug-pricing practices, will do more to help consumers find lower drug prices and have those costs count toward their insurance deductibles. <\/p>\n (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chris Klomp, a top Medicare official, Mark Cuban of Cost Plus Drugs and Tyler Jennings, director of Entrepreneurship and Ecosystem Development with the governor’s office, from left, gather at the Silicon Slopes Summit at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026.<\/p>\n He added that it\u2019s the government\u2019s role to \u201ccreate an environment where people can be disrupters.\u201d <\/p>\n