The startup co-founded by billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry is shipping the first drugs produced to two hospitals that need them.
Bloomberg reported that as of Wednesday, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. is shipping its first batch of allergy medication, epinephrine, and a blood pressure drug, norepinephrine, to 10 hospitals in Texas and Pennsylvania.
Both drugs face nationwide shortages, and Cost Plus began producing them at its Dallas plant last month, according to Bloomberg. Epinephrine injections are currently in short supply, according to the FDA’s drug shortage database as of this writing.
Marco Cubano. Photo credit: Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Cost Plus, which Cuban co-founded with radiologist Alex Oshmyansky, launched in January 2022 and now provides more than 2,300 prescription medications through its online pharmacy.
Related: ‘I was young and I should have known’: Mark Cuban says this is the one thing he would have ‘done differently’ in life
The startup has an ambitious mission to sell drugs safely and at the lowest possible price, a goal it strives to achieve with transparent pricing. According to a letter written by Cuban on the startup’s website, every drug sold by the company has the same price: Cost Plus takes the base price of the drug he has to pay, increases the price by 15% and then adds the actual cost that the pharmacy charge them to prepare the medicine.
So a drug like Albendazole, for example, which treats ringworm and costs about $113 according to Drugs.com, would cost $35 for customers under that pricing method with Cost Plus, per the letter. Cuban wrote that the cost the startup had to pay for the drug was $26.08.
“Many people spend absurd amounts of money every month just to stay healthy,” Cuban wrote. “No American should suffer, or worse, because he cannot afford basic medications.”
Cost Plus also announced Tuesday that it will work with Price.com to integrate its drug prices into Price.com’s AI comparison tool.
Customers using Cost Plus can choose to pick up their prescriptions at 5,000 affiliated pharmacies nationwide starting at last month OR opt for pickup at 2,000 Kroger grocery stores starting in July of last year.
Amazon Pharmacy is another direct-to-consumer online pharmacy platform that recently announced same-day delivery in New York and Los Angeles, with plans to expand to more than a dozen cities by the end of 2024.
Related: ‘Don’t follow your passion’: Mark Cuban shares the ‘worst business advice’ he ever received