Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (MCCPDC) on Thursday announced its partnership with health insurer Capital Blue Cross, saying the move "will help us bring lower-cost medications to members and non-members alike."

Background

In January, MCCPDC launched an online pharmacy that offers generic medications at a significant discount.

To combat high prescription drug prices, MCCPDC purchases generic drugs directly from manufacturers, and resells them to patients after adding on a flat 15% acquisition fee, a $3 pharmacy labor fee, and a $5 shipping fee. The pharmacy also launched "Price Drop Fridays," in which it offers discounted prices for a variety of medications every week.

When the pharmacy first started, it offered 100 generic medications, including those for cancer, diabetes, and gastrointestinal and heart conditions. Now, MCCPDC offers roughly 350 unique generic prescription drugs in different doses—almost 1,000 total products—and it has said it is "continuously working to add new drugs as quickly as possible."

"Not everyone sets the goal of being the lowest cost producer and provider," Mark Cuban said. "My goal is to make a profit while maximizing impact."

While MCCPDC was initially planning to create its own pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), MCCPDC founder and CEO Alex Oshmyansky last month announced that the company would no longer pursue those plans and instead enter a partnership with Rightway—a PBM that aims to cut prescription drug costs.

"It's turned out to be much more efficient to partner with transparently minded and innovative PBMs like Rightway," Oshmyansky said. "Why build all that infrastructure ourselves when there are good actors in the space who already have done it for us?"

Under the partnership, Rightway members can access almost 1,000 generic drugs offered by Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. Moving forward, Oshmyansky said the company will aim to avoid the "de facto bribes" PBMs can receive when they add drug wholesalers to their formularies. 

MCCPDC enters its first partnership with a health insurer

On Thursday, Pennsylvania-based Capital Blue Cross became the first health insurer to partner with MCCPDC. Under the partnership, Capital Blue Cross will cover members' purchases at MCCPDC, starting in 2023.

Starting this month, Capital Blue Cross and MCCPDC will provide members and community organizations with details about the collaboration and explain how to access the discounted drugs.

"We are passionately committed to finding new ways, new relationships that help us improve affordability in healthcare," said Capital Blue Cross president and CEO Todd Shamash.

"Capital's collaboration with Cost Plus Drugs will help us bring lower-cost medications to members and non-members alike across our service area, providing some much-needed relief to those struggling to pay for their vital—and sometimes lifesaving—medications," Shamash added.

Antonio Ciaccia, president of 3 Axis Advisors, previously performed data analytics for MCCPDC and said the health insurer's partnership is an "anomaly." 

"Most health plans are using traditional pharmacy benefit managers who are responsible for creating this culture of high prices in the first place because of the incentives," Ciaccia said.

According to Oshmyansky, the health insurer's mission is closely aligned with MCCPDC's. "Working with a like-minded organization like Capital gives us more momentum to help people get the medications they need at costs they can afford," he said. (Berryman, Modern Healthcare, 10/7; Gliadkovskaya, Fierce Healthcare, 10/6)