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- President Trump just announced deals to make GLP-1 drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly cheaper.Prices start between $150 and $250 for a one-month supply of drugs including Ozempic and Mounjaro.Mark Cuban says it's the based on the same playbook he's been using to lower drug prices for years.
When President Trump told an audience in October that he hoped to cut the cost of Ozempic down from around $1,000 to $150, Dr. Mehmet Oz quickly stepped in to backtrack. Oz, head of Medicare and Medicaid services, grabbed the mic and said it wasn't a done deal.
But Trump had a believer in Mark Cuban — billionaire businessman, former Shark Tank "shark," and longtime critic of the president.
Speaking to Business Insider on Wednesday, Cuban said he believed it was totally possible for Trump to seal a deal with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, makers of the biggest GLP-1 drugs on the market.
Trump seemed to prove him right Thursday, announcing $250 a month Wegovy and $249 prices for anyone on Medicare using a GLP-1, plus the option for states to have $50 co-pays for Medicaid patients, starting in 2026.
Minutes after the deal was announced, Cuban tipped his hat to the president. "I think it's great. No downside for anyone," he told Business Insider on Thursday.
Cuban has been on his own yearslong crusade to reduce the cost of pharmaceutical drugs, via his pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs. His goal is to advertise drugs at "net price" — that is, a transparent and fully negotiated what-you-pay-is-what-you-get number for all customers, instead of using a higher "list price" that's negotiated by healthcare middlemen.
"Anything that impacts the middleman, I'm a fan of," Cuban said of Trump's deal.
The president's announcement came the same day Cuban announced his own big cost-cutting deal, slashing the cost of a Crohn's disease medication, one of the most expensive pharmaceutical drugs in the world.
Cuban says he and Trump are, in fact, working from the same playbook to lower drug prices for Americans. It's part of what he describes as the new wave of "farm-to-table" options in prescription drug pricing, with clear price tags and direct-to-consumer selling.
"TrumpRx fits that mold," Cuban said.
How does Trump's Ozempic deal work?
Chris Klomp, the deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, said "starting doses" for oral drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro would be reduced to $149.
That is in line with Trump's October promise, though the exact details of who would be eligible for that price tag and when weren't immediately clear.
What is clear is that many of the most expensive and high-demand weight loss drugs in America are about to get a lot cheaper.
Cuban just cut the price of one of the most expensive drugs in the world
Disney/Christopher Willard
On Thursday, Cuban's pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs, announced it was driving down the cost of a brand-name injectable for autoimmune conditions called Stelara from roughly $80,000 a year to about $1,400 for a new generic version, Starjemza.
This is the latest in Cuban's mission to cut PBMs — "pharmacy benefit managers" — out of the equation in US healthcare.
PBMs negotiate with drug manufacturers to bring drugs into their "formularies" and get them covered for patients. It's an opaque dealmaking process that results in wildly different prices depending on your insurance.
That's why it is difficult for consumers to know exactly how much they might pay for their prescriptions until they step up to the cash register.
Cuban says the trend of skipping PBMs, as he and Trump are both doing, brings pharmacies like Cost Plus closer to his ultimate goal of having every brand-name medication for sale on the shelf, with a clear price tag.
"It's not that the brands don't want to sell to us," Cuban said — it's that they're used to selling through middlemen. "Now, with direct-to-consumer happening more and more, or farm-to-table, I think that's going to start to change."
Drugmakers can actually 'make more money' this way, Cuban said
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Drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk were both at the White House on Thursday to announce the deal, made possible in part because they are both investing billions ($27 billion for Lilly, $20 billion for Novo) in US manufacturing.
"That's all? That's peanuts," Trump said of their US manufacturing investments.
The real reason they are willing to sell their GLP-1 drugs at dramatically lower prices and still make a profit, Cuban said, is because TrumpRx, like Cost Plus, eliminates the PBMs.
Already, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have established their own websites for selling GLP-1 drugs direct to consumers, at around $350-500 per month, depending on the dose. That's not exactly cheap, but it was already more than 50% off the list price.
"The big brand pharmaceutical manufacturers recognize they make more money with net pricing," Cuban said. "That's why Lilly and Novo do their direct thing, and it's half the price, or less than half the price, of what a corporate sponsor is paying for their GLP-1, even after rebates."
"We're having a lot of really good conversations" directly with pharmaceutical brands, Cuban said.
