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Speaker 3: What about the dail show I got tonight?
Speaker 4: An entrepreneur, an already owner of the NBA's Dallas Marrick's,
Speaker 4: co founder of Costs Plus drug company. Please welcome, Mark
Speaker 4: Kevin shirt welcome, Thank you you are you're sir.
Speaker 3: Security.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear you what you said.
Speaker 3: This is no this is a Knicks down friend. They
Speaker 3: love that. Now are people in New York?
Speaker 4: Are they because of the history between the Mavericks and
Speaker 4: the Knicks generally with the trades where you fleeced us
Speaker 4: to a certain extent, Uh, do you find there's a
Speaker 4: kindness that is uh yeah, yeah, I'm extended to you, Nick.
Speaker 5: Literally, if I like to walk in New York right
Speaker 5: and just today walking down the.
Speaker 1: Street, yeah, kill man.
Speaker 3: We love you and it's.
Speaker 5: Crazy literally a great basketball fans here. I get all
Speaker 5: kinds of love.
Speaker 3: And that's what you get in New York. That's what
Speaker 3: they shout at you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's what I get. Now it's more thanks
Speaker 4: for JB. Right, but yeah, that's what I write, well Jalen.
Speaker 4: But now, did you have any idea when Jalen Brunson
Speaker 4: was there? And I'm sorry to go down this road,
Speaker 4: but I'm a Nick fan and this is just you're
Speaker 4: gonna have to sit through ith Jalen Brunson was not
Speaker 4: He started in the playoffs.
Speaker 3: When uh, yeah, when Luca got us, did you have any.
Speaker 4: Idea that he would become this all nb a phenomenon.
Speaker 4: He's undersized, he doesn't his footwork is so phenomenal.
Speaker 5: No, no idea. I mean, I mean he was talented,
Speaker 5: but he was picked in the second. If everybody knew,
Speaker 5: he would have been a top five pick, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: if you redraft that draft other than Luca, he is
Speaker 5: a top.
Speaker 1: Three or five pick.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. Yeah, but more credit to him.
Speaker 4: He worked on it, yeah, and he's and it just
Speaker 4: seems like a phenomenal guy and then decided to take
Speaker 4: a contract for less money than he could have made.
Speaker 1: So let's talk politics.
Speaker 3: Part the way.
Speaker 4: Now, you are in this interesting position in your career
Speaker 4: where you've sort of above you are now, even though
Speaker 4: I think your leanings are probably you consider more independent,
Speaker 4: more libertarian.
Speaker 3: You are the left's favorite billionaire. You'd become.
Speaker 4: Because and I can't I don't know if it's because.
Speaker 3: There's a certain mellowing that occurs.
Speaker 4: As you get older, or if this new sort of
Speaker 4: tech bro phenomenon is so dystopian in its formulae.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean this is all who I've always been.
Speaker 5: I haven't been like the rich guy trying to act
Speaker 5: like a rich guy. And my friends are still my
Speaker 5: high school buddies, my college buddies, my rugby buddies. But
Speaker 5: watching what's happened in Silicon Valley is insane, right right.
Speaker 5: It's not so much a support thing. It's more like
Speaker 5: a takeover thing, trying to put themselves in a position
Speaker 5: to have as much control as possible. They want Trump
Speaker 5: to be the CEO of the United States of America,
Speaker 5: and they want to be the board of directors that
Speaker 5: makes him listen to them.
Speaker 1: It's not a good.
Speaker 3: What is the ethos?
Speaker 4: Because it seems like in the old days of innovation
Speaker 4: there was a certain amount of we're innervating the Internet,
Speaker 4: we're taking things. Now it seems much more about sort
Speaker 4: of this social engineering and transhumanism and we are going
Speaker 4: to join with computers and together eight of us are
Speaker 4: going to run everything dominating.
Speaker 3: Right, Is that the ethos you see?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think with yeah, you just.
Speaker 4: Said, yeah, they've gotten to the point now where they
Speaker 4: feel like they should control the world, right, and that
Speaker 4: there should be a CEO in charge of everything. But
Speaker 4: because they have a good photo app because of riches, right,
Speaker 4: you know, it's just like you get to that point
Speaker 4: sometimes where I think they've lost the connection to real world.
Speaker 3: Is it boredom?
Speaker 4: Like is there a certain extent like if you're like
Speaker 4: a Bezos or one of those guys, you just you've
Speaker 4: sold so many books that.
Speaker 3: You're just like, I'm going to live on Mars.
Speaker 5: Like it's just I think it's more what's their next act? Right,
Speaker 5: We've like we invented this, we did this, we created that.
Speaker 5: What can we do next? Somebody wants to go to Mars? Well,
Speaker 5: what can we do here back on Earth? Well, let's
Speaker 5: I mean look at Elon, right, Elon and being one
Speaker 5: of those powerful people, he's trying to be the most
Speaker 5: influential man in the world. It sounds like a commercial,
Speaker 5: but literally that's what Twitter has given.
Speaker 4: I've got to say I think he might be that
Speaker 4: because I don't even think he's trying to be.
Speaker 3: When you when you talk about somebody who is setting
Speaker 3: up up.
Speaker 4: Satellite links for war zones and also controlling discourse in
Speaker 4: the most important in the platform, that would.
Speaker 5: Think he's the most powerful because Twitter is in every
Speaker 5: almost every country, right, and so Twitter gives him the
Speaker 5: ability to connect to the prime minister, the head of
Speaker 5: every country in the world that's right, and that person
Speaker 5: whoever's in charge of that country has an interest in
Speaker 5: what happens on Twitter, and what happens on Twitter because
Speaker 5: of the control of the algorithms. Being the biggest user
Speaker 5: is all dependent on Elon Musk. He literally wherever his
Speaker 5: thumb wants to go, he gets to push his hard certainly.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's transparent about where he wants things to go.
Speaker 4: I think he's very clear that civil war is inevitable,
Speaker 4: and that's white people are under concerning, right, It's you know,
Speaker 4: it'll be like civil wars inevitable. And then he'll write
Speaker 4: underneath there, you know, kind of an understavement on there.
Speaker 4: But I can't I can't decide whether or not. It's
Speaker 4: better to know exactly where he stands and know where
Speaker 4: he's going to be put the thumb on.
Speaker 3: Because he's clearly.
Speaker 4: A very bright guy, and he has a media empire
Speaker 4: that has the largest reach and most influence of anything
Speaker 4: on the face of the earth.
Speaker 3: And there's no question he's going to leverage it in
Speaker 3: this election, no question.
Speaker 5: But the crazy part is he has more impact globally
Speaker 5: than he does domestically in my opinion, right, because when
Speaker 5: you go on X you see a preponderance of right
Speaker 5: leaning people.
Speaker 1: You don't see a lot.
Speaker 3: They're all over for you. I've never clicked on any
Speaker 3: of these.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the whole thing.
Speaker 4: That's the way algorithms work, right, what, Yes, they do
Speaker 4: the opposite of what I want.
Speaker 1: Yes, But somebody tells me when you write an algorithm.
Speaker 1: I haven't written a lot, it's been a while.
Speaker 5: But when you write one, you get to set the
Speaker 5: parameters of what you want to see happen. And he
Speaker 5: certainly has done that to the things he likes. But
Speaker 5: it's different in other platforms. And the good news is
Speaker 5: what twenty percent of adults in the United States are
Speaker 5: on Twitter, So I mean there's eighty percent who aren't there.
Speaker 4: But isn't this a certain amount of tech bro malpractice
Speaker 4: that there is this incredible need in the marketplace of
Speaker 4: something that is slightly less biased or you know, toxic
Speaker 4: when it comes through there and like they came out
Speaker 4: with threads and you're on it for two seconds and
Speaker 4: you're like, I think I need an app.
Speaker 1: No, I like threads. Threads is getting better. Try it.
Speaker 4: No, here's something that doesn't sell online. No, it's getting better.
Speaker 4: That may be the worst sailshit ever. Okay for any
Speaker 4: of these, but see, you you do disrupt industries like
Speaker 4: there is. See, that's why I would have thought, and
Speaker 4: I think you've said this that Trump appealed to you
Speaker 4: at first because there is a certain outsider And look,
Speaker 4: we both know our government there is a status quo
Speaker 4: and there is a capture by lobbies and by big
Speaker 4: businesses that write this legislation and end up gaining advantage that.
Speaker 3: Needs to be disrupted.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 4: When did it occur to you that he didn't necessarily
Speaker 4: want to free it. He wanted to have the deed
Speaker 4: to the swamp signed over to him.
Speaker 5: About the third time I talked to him, Right, it
Speaker 5: was he wasn't about changing. I mean the conversations I
Speaker 5: would have with him. I'm like, there was a time
Speaker 5: when are these phone conversational conversations?
Speaker 3: Yes? Is it zoom?
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't zoom right, that was pre zoom. Actually
Speaker 1: does he FaceTime?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: That didn't FaceTime right.
Speaker 5: But like we were talking about this one debate for
Speaker 5: CNBC that he wasn't going to be at, and I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, don going, mud no going.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, Donald, why don't you go to a
Speaker 5: local small business and sit there at the table and
Speaker 5: just show off your business chops right, and show people
Speaker 5: your business? He goes Mark, Donald Trump and Mark Cuban
Speaker 5: don't go to people's houses and have dinner?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? That's who he is.
Speaker 5: Right when we talked about what's he going to do
Speaker 5: with the ground game out, I got all these religious
Speaker 5: people who are going to do their work.
Speaker 3: For me Jesus. So he in his mind.
Speaker 4: So I think this is very interesting because and maybe
Speaker 4: you know this too, he runs a fan family business,
Speaker 4: so he is in essence and monarch. It's a dictatorship,
Speaker 4: and maybe there's not as much malevolence to his actions
Speaker 4: as Oh this America can be a subsidiary of the
Speaker 4: Trump organization because this is how I run it. And
Speaker 4: they might say, well, we have checks and balances and
Speaker 4: division of government, and he just thinks himself, Yeah, no,
Speaker 4: we're going to get out of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the sense I get.
Speaker 3: That's what it is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is my country, right, everybody else is bad?
Speaker 5: Donald Good? Okay, and so Donald Good. So whoever thinks
Speaker 5: Donald goold also come.
Speaker 1: Along with the for the ride, right?
Speaker 5: I mean he just brought hate and anger to politics,
Speaker 5: and that is a sales pitch.
Speaker 3: When you talk to him.
Speaker 4: Is that a part of his general conversation or do
Speaker 4: you think that is a strategic demagoguing of He wants
Speaker 4: to get that emotion.
Speaker 5: That wasn't what we talked about. But I think that's
Speaker 5: Donald is a sales rep. He's a salesperson. He's going
Speaker 5: to follow what works and whatever. He's going to try
Speaker 5: all kinds of different thing. He's going to talk to
Speaker 5: all kinds of different people and he'll try things out
Speaker 5: and if it works, it's going to He's going to
Speaker 5: do more of it.
Speaker 3: Do you see him on his heels? Now?
Speaker 4: When was the last time that you sort of had
Speaker 4: these counseling sessions.
Speaker 1: No, there weren't.
Speaker 4: I talked to him probably twenty nineteen. No, I talked
Speaker 4: to him during the pandemic because I was trying to
Speaker 4: help him with different things.
Speaker 1: Look, he's still the president of the United States.
Speaker 5: It's still our country, right, So I tried to help
Speaker 5: him with PPE and a lot of different things, a
Speaker 5: lot of medical cares type stuff.
Speaker 4: Sure, the guy who suggested the bleach is that you
Speaker 4: is that everything. Everything's going great, everything's working Cuban the Princess.
Speaker 3: Have you tried drinking liquid Plumber?
Speaker 4: I did not say drink I said in Jack all right, Paradise.
Speaker 4: So what is your relationship now with this tech world
Speaker 4: and how does AI fit into that? And how do
Speaker 4: you remain bullish on those innovations when they so clearly
Speaker 4: are working to avoid any kind of regulation of these
Speaker 4: new innovations.
Speaker 5: Okay, two things. One, they're there because they're rich, not
Speaker 5: because they're tech bros. Or because they just happen to
Speaker 5: make their money in tech. I don't think that's really
Speaker 5: applicable the AI side. You know, I've been in technology
Speaker 5: for a long time, and you can always look at
Speaker 5: a new tech PCs networks, the Internet, streaming whatever, and say, Okay,
Speaker 5: in five years, this is what's going to happen, right,
Speaker 5: have a good sense with AI. You can't do that
Speaker 5: with large language models. We have no idea whether it's
Speaker 5: going to zig or zag or what the impact is
Speaker 5: going to be.
Speaker 1: And that's the good news and the bad news. The
Speaker 1: good news is we're dominating right now globally the United States.
Speaker 5: Is the bad news is in terms of in terms
Speaker 5: of are the quality and the impact of the AI
Speaker 5: and the advancements that we're introducing in AI, the research
Speaker 5: that we're doing, we are, without questioning the leader, and
Speaker 5: that's really important from a defense perspective, military, et cetera.
Speaker 5: And also you know, from a business perspective, it's going
Speaker 5: to have a big impact on this country. I personally
Speaker 5: think it's generally positive, but there's a lot of uncertainty
Speaker 5: to come.
Speaker 1: And so when you what.
Speaker 4: Gives you the hope that it's generally positive because I
Speaker 4: as a counterpoint, we heard the same thing about social media,
Speaker 4: and we heard the same thing about all these different
Speaker 4: innovations of the connectivity, and yet every time I turn
Speaker 4: on Congress, Zuckerberg's up there, like.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm really sad. I didn't know it was going
Speaker 3: to kill all your daughters.
Speaker 5: Like, no, Remember, it's still just a short window. Social media,
Speaker 5: you know, has really only been prominent last six years.
Speaker 5: And I think we'll learn and we'll evolve, and the
Speaker 5: same thing will happen with AI. There's going to be
Speaker 5: points in time where it's up right and people are
Speaker 5: using it. But I think over time, particularly with gen Z, right,
Speaker 5: gen Z is a different beast. You know, boomers are idiots.
Speaker 5: I mean we went from sex, We went from sex,
Speaker 5: drugs and rock and roll to Fox News. I mean,
Speaker 5: it doesn't get any worse than.
Speaker 4: That, Right, And they're trying to we haven't done well, and.
Speaker 5: They're trying to define regulations, right, and that's hard, right,
Speaker 5: That's really really true. And so I think gen Z
Speaker 5: has a better understanding and a better feel for AI
Speaker 5: and where it's going and would maybe be able to
Speaker 5: come up with better uses, better implementations, and better regulation.
Speaker 4: Does it concern you that the implementation time frame? So
Speaker 4: when you think about the industrial revolution, right, and you
Speaker 4: think about the disruption or globalization, the disruption to the workforce,
Speaker 4: the way that labor can travel and labor cannot travel,
Speaker 4: but capital can, right, and all these different things that
Speaker 4: were kind of a race to the bottom for American
Speaker 4: workers to a large extent. But all those changes took
Speaker 4: place over sometimes the century, sometimes decades. The changes in
Speaker 4: AI the disrupt, right. So when you've got something that
Speaker 4: disrupts to maybe even a larger extent than globalization did,
Speaker 4: to maybe a larger extent than the Industrial Revolution did,
Speaker 4: and it's going to happen by Thursday, in what world
Speaker 4: are humans in any way capable and set to withstand
Speaker 4: that disruption.
Speaker 5: I think we'll be able to withstand it. But I
Speaker 5: think it's going to be very disruptive. And the problem
Speaker 5: is it's going to happen anyways. And you know, somebody here,
Speaker 5: your son at Duke right, can say I've got this
Speaker 5: great idea, I'm going to implement it with an open
Speaker 5: source large language model, and I'm going to take it in.
Speaker 3: That's so weird. He did say that to me, right.
Speaker 4: But gen Z is different, right, gen Z, I think
Speaker 4: looks at humanity humanity differently. Is kinder, Like I've got
Speaker 4: three kids, fifteen, eighteen and twenty one, right, right, and
Speaker 4: they're just nicer, right, They're not like we were. So
Speaker 4: are you trying to say, like, are we weathering what
Speaker 4: is the last gasp of this kind of more misanthropic
Speaker 4: moment in history? So in your mind, whatever happens, this
Speaker 4: is going to be a more misanthropic decade that will
Speaker 4: be ameliorated by this younger generation.
Speaker 5: Right, I hope so, because the regulatory cap the way
Speaker 5: we've always done politics right now is everybody's chasing power
Speaker 5: and nothing will give you more power than military and AI.
Speaker 5: And I think the algorithm. I mean, we've talked going
Speaker 5: back to algorithms again, right, driven by AI. That's the
Speaker 5: most powerful element in the world right now because everybody
Speaker 5: just gets whatever they're seeing reinforced. And if you want
Speaker 5: to influence somebody, just manipulate the algorithm and you'll get
Speaker 5: their attention.
Speaker 4: And so but I think, so, what's the remedy on
Speaker 4: that if there's no one working a pushback, If pushing
Speaker 4: back on that is considered.
Speaker 3: You just got to go censorship.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those things where you've got to
Speaker 1: go through it.
Speaker 4: It's an evolution of a new media model, just an
Speaker 4: evolution of technology, right, media, right, because if we don't
Speaker 4: do it, the Chinese and the Russians will because the
Speaker 4: only thing that holds AI back is processing power, electricity,
Speaker 4: and ingenuity, right, and I think our ingenuity wins.
Speaker 5: I'm still a big believer in an American exceptionalism. I
Speaker 5: still believe that we've got the best technologists in the world,
Speaker 5: and I think that's why we have to open that
Speaker 5: door for AI.
Speaker 4: So ultimately it becomes a question of the world is
Speaker 4: going to be carved up in the way that it's
Speaker 4: always been somewhat carved up in terms of its resources.
Speaker 4: The question is is it carved up by the Western
Speaker 4: world or is it carved up by somebody else, a
Speaker 4: different world? And do they set up a different system.
Speaker 4: And I'm assuming that Russia and China see a unique
Speaker 4: vulnerability in the West's ascension in this moment that's been
Speaker 4: the world order since nineteenth.
Speaker 5: Everybody looks at it, right, and looks at it and
Speaker 5: says AI, if I can he who controls AI?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: And so, But we've done a good job of limiting processors.
Speaker 5: The new Semiconductor Act will help us quite a bit,
Speaker 5: and we'll bring things. You know, we were already doing
Speaker 5: most of those things here.
Speaker 4: Right, So how do you resist the ring, right, So
Speaker 4: like Lord of the Rings, the Ring of power, like
Speaker 4: it's the one thing. Boy, when you get the ring,
Speaker 4: you just don't want to let it go. How do
Speaker 4: you resist that? Because you've got the money, you've got
Speaker 4: the influence. You could be that guy. You could be
Speaker 4: setting those things up and doing all that, but you're
Speaker 4: just trying to get us like better generic aspirin, Like
Speaker 4: what is happening?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I'm telling you that I know what I.
Speaker 1: Know, and I know what I can do. I know
Speaker 1: what I'm good at.
Speaker 4: Okay, and you're not tempted by the ring that's in
Speaker 4: front of it.
Speaker 5: Because I think there's a different ring, right, Because yeah,
Speaker 5: AI could be the end all be all technologically, but
Speaker 5: that doesn't play to my strengths and the ups and
Speaker 5: downs and ins and outs are just not me. But
Speaker 5: you want to talk about pharmacy, what could be better
Speaker 5: than the healthcare system in the United States of America
Speaker 5: and make it so it's affordable.
Speaker 4: But there's your things, there's the path, there there is
Speaker 4: I imagine when you get in that position, at that height,
Speaker 4: you can't help but hear the siren call of you
Speaker 4: could run this whole Thank you, but.
Speaker 5: Maybe a little bit, maybe a little bit, but you know,
Speaker 5: just I hate to use the cliches, but the way
Speaker 5: I was raised, I've got three kids, right, and I
Speaker 5: don't want to miss that, you know, I don't want
Speaker 5: to be ninety five and look back and say I
Speaker 5: was president, but I didn't get to know my kids
Speaker 5: at all. Right, you know, I'd rather say healthcare and
Speaker 5: everybody's healthier, and everybody's got a better world to live in.
Speaker 5: And my kids and I have friends, were close. You know,
Speaker 5: they bring over the grandkids and the kids' kids, and
Speaker 5: that's just more important to me.
Speaker 4: Right, And do you have your eye on other industries
Speaker 4: right now where you can do sort of the same thing.
Speaker 5: If this pharmacy and where you know costplus Drugs dot
Speaker 5: Com stant I'm gonna get that sales pitch in there.
Speaker 5: Costplus Drugs dot Com is literally in process of having
Speaker 5: a significant impact on the drug market.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: We are pushing generic drugs down down now, we're right
Speaker 5: around the corner front.
Speaker 4: Well, you're negotiating prices in a way that hasn't been done, right.
Speaker 5: So when you go prior to us, there was no
Speaker 5: transparency whatsoever, right, and so nobody knew what the price
Speaker 5: of any medication was, whether you're an employer playing for you.
Speaker 3: And it's just run by these boards.
Speaker 5: Yeah, these pharmacy benefit managers are dictating prices left and right.
Speaker 5: They're basically stealing money from employers and employees. And so
Speaker 5: we walked in there and said, what's the one missing
Speaker 5: piece transparency? So when you go to costplus Drugs dot com,
Speaker 5: you put in the name of the medication you might take.
Speaker 5: Let's just say to dilaphil, right, I know you don't
Speaker 5: know what's.
Speaker 3: Sort of drug. I'm so hopped up on.
Speaker 1: I have no idea.
Speaker 3: Do you know what it is?
Speaker 4: I don't generic sialis. As I said before, I am
Speaker 4: so hot up. When you go to cost plus Drugs
Speaker 4: dot com and you put into dila phil or what
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 5: First thing we do is we show you our cost.
Speaker 5: Then we show you our markup, which is always fifteen percent,
Speaker 5: and everybody gets the same price because we're mill order
Speaker 5: to start, we're starting to partner with pharmacies. Now there
Speaker 5: is a shipping fee, and then there's a fee for
Speaker 5: the pharmacists.
Speaker 4: To review everything. And when you do it that way,
Speaker 4: and this is legal, of course, it's legal. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: good old American capitalism. But let me just tell you
Speaker 4: the impact.
Speaker 5: There are drugs that There's a drug called a matinet
Speaker 5: for chemotherapy that when we started, the price of a
Speaker 5: matinet if you just walked into a big pharmacy, a
Speaker 5: big chain pharmacy, was going to be two thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: You go to costplus Drugs dot com, it's under thirty.
Speaker 5: There's a drug droxa dopa, right, that's.
Speaker 1: Just seen salty.
Speaker 5: I had a friend, I had a friend Landon who
Speaker 5: was in a terrific car crash and he needed this
Speaker 5: drug droxadopa and lost his insurance.
Speaker 4: It was going to be thirty thousand dollars every three months.
Speaker 4: I'm like, let me just check to seafood. We can
Speaker 4: get it sixty four dollars a month. And the price
Speaker 4: has gone down since all because we were transparent. But like,
Speaker 4: weren't there dudes like Martin Screlly in jail for shit
Speaker 4: like that, Like when you jack prices up like that?
Speaker 4: And why can't the United States government negotiate in terms
Speaker 4: of if you're the largest customer to any industry, it's
Speaker 4: criminal that you wouldn't use any leverage to make those
Speaker 4: things more available.
Speaker 1: The problem was.
Speaker 5: There's this thing called pharmacy benefit managers, right, and they're
Speaker 5: basically responsible for doing the negotiating with to a certain extent, Medicare,
Speaker 5: but with all the large employers. If you're one of
Speaker 5: those big companies that cover one hundred and fifty million
Speaker 5: employees across the country, that's who you negotiate with. And
Speaker 5: the first rule when they negotiate, they say is you
Speaker 5: can't talk about this. It's like fight club. You cannot
Speaker 5: say what your price is. You can't say what we're
Speaker 5: doing in our negotiation. And they got so big doing
Speaker 5: that that nobody ever questioned them. We come along, and
Speaker 5: actually Martin Scurelly plays a little part in this whole
Speaker 5: thing because when he got thrown in jail, I was
Speaker 5: talking to alex Oshmyanski, my partner, and it's like, if
Speaker 5: this dude can just jack up the price, it is
Speaker 5: not an efficient market. That means nobody knows what the
Speaker 5: real cost is. If we publish our price boom, the
Speaker 5: whole world's going to change. As it turns out, the
Speaker 5: FTC just came out with this report criticizing the PBMs.
Speaker 5: They used our pricing data. The smartest thing we did
Speaker 5: was so.
Speaker 4: Now, so this brings up so FTC is a Federal
Speaker 4: Trade Commission, and boy, there's nothing the tech world.
Speaker 3: Hates more than the FC than the FTC. So how
Speaker 3: does that square?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, like any agency they do, something's right
Speaker 5: and something's wrong. So but in this case with the PBMs,
Speaker 5: they're crushing them and it's justified.
Speaker 3: Now is it something that can't be done throughout the.
Speaker 4: Healthcare Because one of the difficulties with healthcare is the
Speaker 4: contingencies of you can't really comparison shop. When you have
Speaker 4: a heart attack, you're basically saying, drive me to.
Speaker 1: The closest hospital and take care of it.
Speaker 3: But those prices you're.
Speaker 4: Talking about, you could get heart attack treatment at this
Speaker 4: hospital it's one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but you
Speaker 4: go up the street and it's twelve thousand.
Speaker 1: And it's all about knows what's and what happens is
Speaker 1: who's pain?
Speaker 5: When you, you know, God forbid, have a heart attack
Speaker 5: and you go there and let's just say it's going
Speaker 5: through your employer, right, your employer has no idea what
Speaker 5: they're paying. And so what we're saying is on drugs first,
Speaker 5: and now we're just getting it approved today. We're going
Speaker 5: to publish all contracts. Never before has it been done
Speaker 5: where for my companies. We're saying, if you want to
Speaker 5: do business with us, if this hospital system wants to
Speaker 5: work with my companies, whatever it may be, we're going
Speaker 5: to publish them and put them online for anybody to
Speaker 5: see all of our pricing.
Speaker 3: So the right way.
Speaker 6: I think that's fantastic, But I'm curious, set why is
Speaker 6: there such pushback on this idea of applying those same
Speaker 6: kinds of competitions and things to our healthcare sism.
Speaker 4: You know, we talk about what we have about a privatized
Speaker 4: healthcare sism and it's the best in the world, but
Speaker 4: very clearly it.
Speaker 3: Doesn't function like a free market.
Speaker 1: No, it's not in the money way at all.
Speaker 4: So what is so terrible about getting everybody healthcare?
Speaker 3: Like? Why is that such?
Speaker 5: That's the moone thats But these companies, these PBMs and
Speaker 5: the big insurance companies they call them the buka's the
Speaker 5: largest insurance companies, right, they are so big, Like like
Speaker 5: I keep on saying, big employers cover one hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty million people, right, And the CEO of this big
Speaker 5: company doesn't know much about healthcare and their health care costs,
Speaker 5: and so they just say to them, Okay, we're going
Speaker 5: to write you a check for a rebate, even though
Speaker 5: it's your sickest.
Speaker 1: Employees that are paying for that rebate.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: They just don't know.
Speaker 3: And it's so.
Speaker 4: Interesting because it's such a non villainous you know, nobody
Speaker 4: ever talks about like big prescription benefit manager, right.
Speaker 1: Like that's a good tell me.
Speaker 3: It's always like big oil is going to.
Speaker 4: Come down, or big tobacco or big farm, And it's
Speaker 4: really like the pbaig middle manager.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what it is, right, and you cut them out, right,
Speaker 5: there's no reason for the big ones that are controlled
Speaker 5: ninety percent of the prescriptions that are filled, there's.
Speaker 4: No reason for them to exist. There are others that
Speaker 4: are called pass through PBMs, right, that show you all
Speaker 4: your claims, show you all your data, show you all
Speaker 4: your pricing, that do it for a fraction of the price. Right,
Speaker 4: So there's an opportunity to disruption.
Speaker 3: Disruption be like to see what's that? Now, what's what
Speaker 3: else you have your eye on?
Speaker 1: It's for healthcare, healthcare.
Speaker 3: It's going to be healthcare health care. I'm with that.
Speaker 4: I'm with that too, and it might be, you know,
Speaker 4: with that money, if you could help the Knicks get okay,
Speaker 4: forget it, it's all fine. Thank you very much for
Speaker 4: coming by. It's always a fascinating conversation.
Speaker 3: Check out costplus Drugs dot com.
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