Mark Cuban says pharma villain Martin Shkreli impressed him

The Shark Tank investor and Dallas Mavericks proprietor takes inspiration the place he can get it.

The inspiration for pharmaceutical darling Mark Cuban was pharmaceutical villain Martin Shkreli. No less than that’s what Cuban advised Recode’s Kara Swisher at this 12 months’s Code Convention.

“If he may jack issues up 1,500 p.c or no matter it was, why can’t we reduce it, proper? As a result of it reveals there’s pricing fungibility there,” Cuban, the co-founder of Value Plus Medicine, stated. He was referring to Shkreli, who rose to infamy on the helm of Turing Prescribed drugs, the place he raised costs for a drug used to deal with AIDS, malaria, and most cancers by greater than 5,000 p.c.

Some 18 million Individuals have been unable to pay for prescriptions, in keeping with a survey final 12 months by Gallup and West Well being.

Cuban, who’s higher referred to as an web billionaire, Shark Tank investor, and proprietor of the Dallas Mavericks, has been broadly lauded for serving to scale back prescription drug costs for Individuals. Value Plus Medicine says it saves clients cash by bypassing typical pharmacy advantages managers, which negotiate drug costs for employers and governments however have been criticized for not passing sufficient of the financial savings onto customers. Whereas Cuban’s service is supposed for folks with no insurance coverage or excessive deductibles, Cuban thinks that making a clear pricing system — Value Plus costs clients the price of the medication plus 15 p.c, a $three pharmacy payment, and $5 delivery — will assist decrease premium prices for everyone.

Shkreli just lately shot again at Cuban in a Substack e-newsletter claiming that the billionaire overstated his firm’s price financial savings. Firstly of this 12 months, Shkreli was banned from the pharmaceutical trade and fined $64 million. He was imprisoned on an unrelated cost and launched this spring.

Cuban’s firm has solely been at it for about seven months now, so it stays to be seen to what extent it will possibly assist treatment prescription drug prices for Individuals.

“If somebody got here as much as you and stated, ‘Right here’s a approach for us to alter an enormous downside and make folks’s lives higher and you may, in all probability, if not earn money a minimum of break even doing it,’” Cuban advised the viewers. “Why wouldn’t you?”