Billionaire venture capitalist Mark Cuban has not shied away from blasting President Donald Trump’s policy decisions, but he said Trump’s latest move just might work.
The president announced on Tuesday plans to launch TrumpRx.gov, a federal government-operated website to sell prescription drugs directly to consumers at discounted rates. Cuban founded Cost Plus Drugs, a similar DTC platform, in 2022 with the goal of disrupting the healthcare industry. The online marketplace sells hundreds of discounted generic drugs by circumventing third-party pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that manage prescription-drug benefits on behalf of employers and insurance companies. These PMBs then negotiate rebates with drug manufacturers, but often keep the cash generated from those rebates.
”I think it could be impactful,” Cuban told Fortune in an email. “Their challenge is going to be who has more power and influence over the industry, the PBMs/insurance companies and the contracts they have with brand manufacturers, or the President. That has not been determined yet.”
The Trump administration is partnering with Pfizer to sell the company’s drugs at direct-to-consumer (DTC) cost worth an average of 50% in savings, according to the pharma giant. Other drugmakers will join the program, according to Trump. The website will go live in early 2026.
The partnership with the White House will allow Pfizer a three-year reprieve from Trump’s pharmaceutical tariffs, expected to go into effect on Wednesday, but it also marks a step forward in the president’s “most-favored-nation” pricing approach to pharmaceuticals. Trump signed an executive order in May with the goal of aligning the price of U.S. drugs with those in other countries.
Americans pay substantially more for prescription drugs than patients in other countries. As of 2022, drug prices for both generic and brand drugs were 2.78 times greater than other OECD countries, according to government data.
Cuban’s take on TrumpRx
Cuban gave the TrumpRx platform a grade of a “B,” he said on social media Tuesday, giving the Trump administration credit for bringing on “great people” for the project, such as Chris Klomp, the director of medicare and deputy administrator of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services within the Department of Health and Human Services.
The venture capitalist said the platform would have earned an “A,” but stock prices of PBMs, such as OptumRx’s parent company UnitedHealth Group, ticked up following the announcement, indicating firms don’t believe the new platform will make much of a difference at this time, Cuban said. Trump’s platform still has the opportunities to make waves, according to the investor.
“It’s still rigged to benefit the big PBMs,” Cuban said on X. “That said. It has a chance if they force PBMs to change. If that happens, Trump gets all the credit and it will be deserved.”
Cuban told Fortune PBMs “game the system” by causing the price of brands to be based on rebates. A New York Times investigation in 2024 found that while PBMs have the ability to lower consumer drug costs by negotiating with drug companies what consumers are able to pay through insurance, many instead pointed patients toward more expensive drugs and made billions of dollars by creating subsidiaries to collect fees from drug manufacturers.
“So until these fundamental issues change, it’s going to be difficult to truly impact pricing for all patients,” Cuban said.
Still, public-health experts are skeptical of DTC drug platforms making a big impact on making healthcare more affordable, particularly as TrumpRx right now applies only to Pfizer, Drew Altman, president and CEO of nonpartisan health policy research group KFF, told NBC. Since DTC platforms cut out PBMs, they become de facto cash-only pharmacies that can’t accept insurance plans, limiting who can benefit from the savings.
“Most Americans buy drugs through their insurance plan, so that would mainly help the uninsured,” Altman said.
