ICYMI: President ... Mark Cuban?
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, he's a billionaire with decades of experience playing a rich guy in the press. He took his shtick to a TV network. He starred in a primetime reality show. He's a fan of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. He's a fixture.

On the Maniverse podcast circuit. Is this Donald Trump? He likes crypto. Sounds like Donald Trump, right? He's been mocked for being less accomplished. And that is then his net worth would suggest. And no, Carol, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mark Cuban. He's a sports mogul, a small business influencer, a media personality, a health care disruptor.

and perhaps the ultimate Trump foil. Max Chafkin and John Tazi profile Mark Cuban in the forthcoming new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. It's the July issue. It's out on newsstands soon, but you can read the story now on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg.com. Max is Bloomberg Businessweek columnist. He's also the co-host of

of the Elon Inc. podcast. John is Bloomberg News Healthcare Reporter. Both join us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Max, I want to start with you. Wait, I want to know, was it up in the food court and you guys were grabbing some coffee and you're like, that Mark Cuban guy, and you were like, yeah, we got to do a story. No, I mean, the way, the genesis of this is that John, who's been following the healthcare industry,

you know, Cuban got on his radar because Cuban has been doing some really interesting things there. And where I got interested in it is, is all this buzz around Cuban as a political figure. And it seemed, you know, it seemed like an interesting thing because on one hand he is this kind of somewhat goofy, somewhat unserious reality TV personality. On the other hand, he's doing something serious in healthcare and we've just learned that

that being a little goofy, being a little unserious, sometimes it can work politically. It obviously works politically really well for Donald Trump. Well, let's talk about the serious stuff that he's doing in healthcare. Costs plus drugs, John Tazi.

There's a good portion of the piece that's dedicated to explaining the intricacies of buying certain drugs in the US and I was shocked to find the price differences. Yeah, I mean Mark Cuban Launched this company they launched in the public, you know several years ago started working on it with an entrepreneur in 2018 Initially as kind of just an investment just another kind of portfolio company put some money into but he

got really involved and became a co-founder. And now this is sort of what he's spending a lot of his time on. He's going to conferences, he's going to like small wonky health conferences that you don't expect, you know, a lot of bold faced names at. But there's something that really resonates with Americans about healthcare. You've written a lot about United Healthcare and the aftermath of COVID.

The murder of a health care executive here in New York in December and the frustration that Americans had. There's something that's sort of visceral when it comes to tackling this problem and having someone like Mark Cuban do it. Yeah. And what he did is he came in and looked at this market, prescription drugs,

where there are just vast inefficiencies. There are things that make no sense, and we've written about them, we've talked about them here, drugs that cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in one place that cost a tiny fraction of that for the person acquiring them, and huge markups being taken in the middle. And what he's trying to do is kind of go into those transactions and sort of take out the middleman and

make these medications available for people paying cash without their insurance at a more affordable price than they sometimes get when they go through the traditional channels. I got to say, you wade into something like drug costs and health care, and all of a sudden you're tackling what has been

as we've been talking, one of the biggest problems that are around. And there are other billionaires who've been like tackling, you know, trying to look for some solutions, whether it's Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, who teamed up. I remember, you know, we were all reporting and thinking, okay, they're going to be able to fix all of this. Having said that, you wade into an area like drug costs, and all of a sudden it's a real political problem.

kind of field, right? And you wonder, okay, what else does he want to do? Because it's a big beast of a problem. Well, yeah. I mean, there's something inherently political about talking about this stuff just because it's a thing that makes people angry. Also, you know, a lot of the solutions here are going to require some form of regulation or government spending.

And also, Cuban is just politically involved. I mean, he was, during the Harris campaign, during the 2024 election, he was like a really important surrogate for Kamala Harris. He was on the campaign trail. He was kind of crafting or attempting to essentially sell Harris to the business community and sell Harris as a moderate on economic issues. And that is sort of, you know, if you think about

different directions the democratic party could go in in 2028 you know one of them would be some sort of moderate approach and cuban is is very attractive and there are a lot of like democratic political consultant types who are excited about this a lot of republican political uh consultant types who are thinking about this already because not only does he have this kind of identity as a as a moderate as a business guy solutions oriented

But he's really good on camera, and he's also...

good at sort of sounding like a real person. And that's the thing that kept coming up in my reporting, how important that is. And when you look at, when we talked to Cuban about like what went wrong with Harris, that's kind of what he keyed in on. You know, she didn't know how to sell. That's what he said. And that she, you know, she wasn't herself. It's this kind of like incredibly difficult thing for a lot of politicians. And I think especially for the type of person Mark Cuban is, a business guy, somebody who hasn't been in that

spotlight to be able to thread that needle, to sound like a normal person while also being moderate, like it makes him politically potent. You know, I want to go back to this comparison that I was talking about earlier and you guys laid it out perfectly. I read right from your story.

You actually suggested, Max, to Mark Cuban that he's had a similar career trajectory to President Trump. What happened when you did that? He did not react well. He called it the meanest thing anybody's ever said to me. And John and I were sitting there with him, and I really did think for a second— You know he's a big dude. He was going to throw us out, I know. And the thing is—

He was kidding, to some extent anyway. But he and Trump have been kind of publicly feuding for almost 20 years. It goes all the way back to The Apprentice when shortly after Trump launched The Apprentice, Cuban launched his own show. They sort of traded punches back then. They traded verbal punches during the Obama administration. I think...

I think Cuban is sort of an effective critic of Donald Trump, partly because they are kind of similar, because they are both sort of professional billionaires, guys who play billionaires on TV. And Cuban is able to sort of effectively point to some of the ways that Trump's, you know, personality, you know, sort of

like the character he plays doesn't really live up to the reality. However, he didn't carry his own reality show. He didn't do as well as Donald Trump. And the other point that Cuban makes in terms of their differences is that he, he is a self-made billionaire and, you know, kind of worked his way up, started companies, uh, you know, started selling trash bags door to door, uh, you know, and that he has that, uh, background that, that the president doesn't. I love the highlight quote. The difference, uh, Mark Cuban says is, uh,

he never had to start from broke. You know, you brought up the difference between The Apprentice and Shark Tank. And I do think that's an interesting, it's an interesting contrast. And again, it shows you why Cuban could be politically potent. You know, on The Apprentice, it ends with this kind of ritual humiliation. Donald Trump's firing someone, which of course is very entertaining. And I think one of the reasons Cuban's show, which was called The Benefactor, didn't work is that Cuban was too nice. Uh,

he, you know, no one really nice shark. I'm going to, I'm a huge fan of that show and he's always the nice shark. So Cuban playing this kind of nice guy on this as a supporting role, that was really effective. The other thing that I think made him sort of beloved both on shark tank, uh,

well, initially on Shark Tank, was just the fact that he's the richest and most successful person there. He's the only billionaire of those judges, and he is the one who's kind of backing the goofy companies. He's taking it not quite as seriously. In the same way that Cuban, as a sports owner, as the owner of the Mavericks, part of what made him fun as an owner is that he's the billionaire, but he's also acting like a fan. He's running up and down the court. He's acting like, you know, goofy. He's booing. He's doing all this stuff that...

that a billionaire would not normally do. And that of course can be attractive. - So that's the perfect segue to talk about the genesis of Cost Plus Drugs, because as a shark on Shark Tank, he had this inbox where you would get all these emails, you, Max and John Wright, in the piece. John, back in 2012,

or a few years, I should say, perhaps a few years after that, because it was around the Martin Shkreli time. 2018. 2018 is when this guy Alex... -Oshmayansky. -Oshmayansky got in touch with him. -Yep. -What happened? Yep. So Alex Oshmayansky is a radiologist entrepreneur who is following the drama around drug prices and Martin Shkreli.

raising prices of some older off patent drugs that attracted a lot of attention, a lot of criticism. And he said, why don't we start a company where we can make some of these drugs that are in short supply

and kind of solve some of these problems in the market and kind of eliminate the window for people to take advantage of shortages by raising prices. So he came to, you know, he cold pitched Mark Cuban through an email with this idea that I think the company was originally called something like OSHA's Affordable Pharmaceuticals. Doesn't have the same ring to it. Doesn't have the same ring. And, you

Cuban bit and he invested and kind of took an interest in the business and it became what's now known as Cost Plus. A lot of people who know Cost Plus know kind of the mail order website primarily for generic drugs, some brand drugs available on, but mostly lower cost generic.

generics but there are other elements they're trying to build out too and you know what they articulate is really they're trying to kind of build an alternative um to the existing uh pharmacy benefit managers the way most people get uh prescription drugs they're trying to build something outside of that system to compete with it um it's not really there yet as a full-service solution you know there are a number of drugs

You can't get, you often can't use your insurance through the site. It's not, it sometimes can be much less expensive than going through your insurance, but it's not always. Sometimes you pay more. Can't get GLP-1 drugs there. You can't get GLP-1s for the most part right now. Just an anecdote to share about Cost Plus. I have a friend who works for a company that owns one of the large PBMs. I will not say which one it is. He told me,

a generic medication that he was trying to get. And remember, he works for one of these companies. Like, that's his insurance. He works for one of these companies. It was like an eighth of the price to get it at Cost Plus Drugs versus going through his own company. And he works for one of these PBMs. Which is amazing. Which is crazy, right? So it makes me ask, and just as we kind of wrap up, because...

You know, we know Zachum in terms of a businessman. He's a billionaire, sports. He's doing this, you know, trying to solve some of the problems in the pharmaceutical industry. I mean, is this enough for him? Let me start with you, Max, for him to ultimately get to the White House. Cuban has basically so far said he's not going to do it, but he hasn't quite.

quite he hasn't like a hundred percent ruled it out you know in various interviews with us he said uh not interested i believe but anyway he he's he's he's sort of pushed this down you know when you talk to people in democratic politics though and in politics and what they say is what cuban is doing is number one exactly what you would do if you were running for president you know he's he's doing a lot of interviews with political journalists he's going to in addition to health care events he's

He's going to political events. He is really putting himself out there in a way that raises profile, that allows him to test messaging. And then the other thing is the way the Democratic Party is now, basically somebody like Mark Cuban has to be taken seriously. There is, as we saw with this in New York City, it is wide open. There are a lot of potential paths for Democrats to take. And, you know, obviously one version of that is kind of the progression

the progressive populist left, but there's another that is this kind of Mark Cuban style thing. And that lane is definitely going to be there during the 2028 primary. And it's kind of a question of who occupies it. Cuban being an entrepreneurial guy, being a guy who, you know, likes to be in the center of things. You never, you would never say never. I,

Listen, all bets are off, I think, I feel like, when it comes to the political landscape. We've got to, unfortunately, leave it there. It's an incredible deep dive and a great read. Max Chafkin, columnist at Bloomberg Businessweek, co-host of the Elon Inc. podcast here in studio, along with John Tazi, healthcare reporter, Bloomberg News. This is what we love about Bloomberg, these types of collaborations. Check it out, the story in the upcoming new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. Thanks, guys.

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