Mark Cuban Just Made Optum's CEO Squirm In His Chair.
🔥 CUBAN JUST MADE OPTUM’S CEO SQUIRM AT HOPKINS. HERE’S WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. 🔥
Mark Cuban did something beautiful at Hopkins. He got Patrick Conway, CEO of Optum, on record supporting price transparency. In public. On camera.
That’s not nothing. (Spoiler: That’s everything.)
Mark asked about letting patients shop for cheaper care and having it count against deductibles. Conway said yes. The crowd heard it. We all heard it.
Now here’s where it gets interesting.
Then the Patron Saint of Patients opened the door: he actually made Conway commit to transparency. But transparency is just step one because the real questions are still waiting:
1) Why did 7,000 independent pharmacies close?
2) What about spread pricing that steals billions?
3) How do DIR clawbacks destroy small pharmacies?
4) Why does the DOJ have an investigation running?
I have no doubt that Mark knows these questions exist. He’s very clearly building toward them. After all, you don’t take down a system this corrupt in one conversation. You have to get them on record first and then hold them accountable.
I’ve spent months analyzing (read: lovingly fanboy trolling) Cuban’s “How I’d Fix It If I Were In Charge” manifesto. (Can we still say manifesto in 2025?)
Mark’s playing chess while everyone else plays checkers. This Hopkins moment? That was him moving his knight into position.
The commenters (in the LinkedIn post I am reposting below) who said he asked softball questions missed the strategy. You don’t interrogate someone like Conway. You let him agree to principles he can’t walk back.
Then you use his own words against him.
Conway runs the PBM controlling 50% of UnitedHealth’s RX business. He just agreed that transparency matters. That admission is ammunition for every patient advocate, every closed pharmacy, every family destroyed by drug pricing.
Mark’s genius approach isn’t asking all the questions at once. It’s making the villains commit to values they violate daily and then watching them try to explain the contradiction.
Dear Mark: We’ve got your back on this, the patient advocacy community, that is. We stand at the ready, IV Poles in tandem, for the next round of loaded questions. Conway opened the door to transparency. Let’s walk through it together.
TY for following me, reposting my stuff, hopefully laughing at my tongue-in-cheek cartoons, and responding to my team over email. (!) We will meet soon enough, and the Venn Diagram of Main Street+Wall Street rage against the machine will tear open the right amount of wormhole.
FRIENDS — What questions would YOU ask Conway now that he’s committed to transparency? Drop them below.
Now, how about a rage repost? Or tag a former colleague just for fun. Every impression pushes this in front of more people who deal with the same mess.
Are you new here? My condolences and my thanks. Follow along and stay loud with the rest of us. More voices means more pressure on a system that counts on silence
#CubanVsOptum #HealthcareTransparency #WeThePatients #GameOn
SOURCE ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jocelyn-jiang-asa-maaa-68583817_the-most-entertaining-yet-crutial-discussion-activity-7406839268238716928-e5EV?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACoOGcBl0tUBlFo1fXFaTlNEyPVd2MfUXo