Dear Mark Cuban: Trump’s Healthcare Plan Protects the PBM Cartel

Hey Mark. 

We the patients need to talk about this so called Great Healthcare Plan that claims it will end kickbacks paid by pharmacy benefit managers to large brokerage middlemen.

Sounds great, right?

Except here is what it does not do.

It does not require net pricing. It does not break up vertical integration. It does not stop PBMs from owning specialty pharmacies. It does not prevent formulary manipulation. It does not give employers access to their own claims data. It does not address the GPO shell game people have been yelling about for years.

What it does require is for insurance companies to publish the percentage of claims they reject.

You know what that looks like to us. A press release dressed up as policy. Lipstick on a pig.

You have sat in front of the Senate and called PBMs a cartel. You have walked into rooms full of CEOs and asked one simple question. What does your PBM do that a pass through PBM cannot. Nobody raises their hand.

Because there is no answer.

You have shamed executives into silence with basic math. When insurance companies harm patients, you step in and pay for care yourself. You have shown people what transparency actually looks like by publishing your price list, showing the markup, and letting patients see what drugs cost before they buy them.

This plan is transparency theater.

The tens of thousands of cancer community members I engage with every day do not need a website telling them how often their claims get denied. They already know. They live it. Every prior authorization. Every step therapy. Every so called site review that really functions as risk transfer.

Our mutual friend Sally Neely Nix just had to write a legal brief to Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina to receive an already approved IVIG infusion. The treatment was deemed medically necessary by an external reviewer. She received it throughout 2025. It was denied again in 2026. She won because she knew how to fight.

That behavior is intentional.

Most patients do not know how to fight.

So here is the question for you, Mark.

What do you think of this big beautiful plan. On a scale from mild scabies to full blown hysterical diarrhea, where does it land on your BS meter. Because from where we sit, it looks like another handout to the cartel you have spent years trying to dismantle.

The patient community wants to hear your answer. We are listening.

#WeThePatients #YearOfThePatient #PatronSaintOfPatients