Billionaire investor Mark Cuban is notorious for criticizing startup plans on the acclaimed TV series “Shark Tank,” often dismissing entrepreneurs with the show’s famous line, “I outside. ” But Cuba has also long been criticized for high health costs – and is now jumping in to offer one solution.
Cuban has launched a new company, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, which has a plan to offer low-cost competitors over-the-counter sex drugs. The company launches with one product: albendazole, antiparasitic. It will cost $ 20 per record, a steep discount on its current average cash price of $ 225, according to the company’s website.
Cuba’s plan is to publish the cost of development and circulation for each of its products and then add a 15% margin to land at wholesale price. “This will ensure that we are sustainable and profitable. There are no hidden costs, no middle-aged, discounts only available to insurance companies, ”the website says,“ the approach is completely transparent. ”
The Cuban company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fierce Pharma.
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Mark Cuban Cost Plus expects to market more than 100 additional drugs by the end of 2021, he says. They are building a manufacturing facility in Dallas that they hope to open by 2022.
As a TV star and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Cuban may not look like a natural health care disorder, but in recent years, he has forced health costs down as a personal mission. He is a council member for the United States Care States, a nonprofit organization that advocates for equitable access to health care.
In 2019, Cuban appeared in a television interview with United States Care co-founder Andy Slavitt, when he argued that healthcare in America is “so politically charged that people are not trying to solve problems. They’re trying to sell them the most politically appropriate things, “leading to a system that doesn’t ask the question, ‘How do we make people healthier and then pay for that?'”
Cuban cited high drug prices as an example and suggested creating a “club type like Costco,” where members could obtain drugs “at a cost of more than 15%.”
RELATIONSHIP: Novartis is partnering with Civica Rx to alleviate hospital shortages for 6 high-demand sexual injectables
Cuban is now living that vision for low – cost drugs, but he is far from alone in his mission.
In 2018, five U.S. health systems representing more than 450 hospitals launched a nonprofit sex machine, Civica Rx. It started with 14 drugs administered in the hospital that are generally scarce and since then they have added a series of contracts to what they offer.
Civica Rx recently partnered with Novartis to increase the supply of six injectable sex drugs. They include blood thinners, blood pressure bases and other drugs needed in operating rooms.
And one startup, EQRx, is setting its sights on expensive biology, aiming to create low-cost alternatives to expensive drugs on the market. EQRx, the 2020 winner of Fierce 15, raised $ 500 million in series B funding last week, which it will use to develop four cancer drugs that are currently in a phase 3 trial, he said.