The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. launched its online pharmacy in January, offering low-cost versions of high-cost generic drugs. And it all started with a cold email. 

Alex Oshmyansky, MD, PhD, fired off an email to Mr. Cuban with a simple subject line: “Cold pitch.” The then 33-year-old radiologist told Mr. Cuban about work he was doing in Denver with a compounding pharmacy and the business plan behind a company he founded in 2018, Osh’s Affordable Pharmaceuticals. 

“I asked him a simple question, because this was when the whole pharma bro thing was going down,” Mr. Cuban said on NPR podcast The Limits, referring to convicted felon Martin Shkreli. “I was like, ‘Look, if this guy can jack up the prices 750 percent for lifesaving medicines, can we go the opposite direction? Can we cut the pricing? Are there inefficiencies in this industry that really allow us to do it and really make a difference?'”

Dr. Oshmyansky answered yes. Their weekly email correspondence continued for months. The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. was quietly founded in May 2020, and Dr. Oshmyansky now serves as its CEO. The company is organized as a public-benefit corporation, meaning it is for-profit but claims its social mission of improving public health is just as important as the bottom line.

“We basically created a vertically integrated manufacturing company that will start with generic drugs,” Mr. Cuban told NPR. A major component of the strategy is to bypass pharmacy benefit managers, which Mr. Cuban likens to bouncers at a club.

“They’re the ones who say, ‘Hey, I’m controlling access to all the big insurance companies. If you want this insurance company to sell your drug, you’ve got to pay the cover charge. All these drugs pay the cover charge to these PBMs through rebates, and because they’re paying the cover charges, the prices are jacked up,” Mr. Cuban told NPR. “We said we’re going to create our own PBM, we’re going to work directly with the manufacturers, and we’re not going to charge the cover charge.”

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. marks the prices of its drugs up 15 percent, charges a $3 pharmacy fee to pay the pharmacists it works with, and a fee for shipping. “That’s it,” Mr. Cuban said on NPR. “There’s no other added costs. The manufacturers love what we’re doing for that reason.”

Others have set out before to disrupt pharma the way Mr. Cuban and Dr. Oshmyansky intend, but their downfall is cooperating or giving in to the PBMs, the entrepreneur noted. 

“People always ask, well why didn’t somebody do this before? The reality is there’s so much money there, it’s hard not to be greedy,” Mr. Cuban said on the podcast. “If you get to any scale at all, those PBMs will start throwing money at you and saying, ‘Look, just play the game.’” 

Mr. Cuban has indicated he has no intention to play the game. 

“I could make a fortune from this,” Mr. Cuban told Texas Monthly last fall. “But I won’t. I’ve got enough money. I’d rather f— up the drug industry in every way possible.”