Humana Inc. and Mark Cuban recently announced at the Forbes healthcare conference that they are working on a potential pharmacy partnership, which could increase pressure on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Cuban owns Cost Plus Drugs, a company that sells medications to consumers via mail-order and prides itself on transparent pricing. Humana primarily sells Medicare health plans, but its CenterWell Division is delving into the pharmacy business.
The two industry players are focusing their efforts on “direct-to-employer” programs, which would bypass PBMs altogether and sell drugs directly to health plans. CenterWell, Humana’s primary care center designed for seniors, already uses its own specialty pharmacies. The hope for both Humana and Cuban is to create a new system that saves consumers money on drug prices.
Furthermore, Cuban’s company already provides at-home delivery of drugs for individuals with prescriptions. Currently, Humana uses a PBM for that function, so partnering with Cuban could allow the company to cut out the PBM altogether.
Cuban historically has been extremely critical of PBMs, which are entities that contract with drug manufacturers and pharmacies to provide drug benefits for healthcare plans. If Cost Plus Drugs reaches a partnership deal with Humana, it will benefit from Humana’s current health plan enrollees, which number more than eight million, including over five million Medicare Advantage plan enrollees.
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