Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is calling on Congress to move aggressively against pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and healthcare consolidation following a blistering new House Judiciary Committee report targeting CVS Health and its vertically integrated business model.

Cuban has previously spoken with the Washington Reporter multiple times on antitrust issues, the presidential campaign, and on the case for PBM reform. 

The House Judiciary Committee’s report concluded that consolidation among insurers, PBMs, and pharmacies has reduced competition, raised drug prices, and boxed out independent options for patients. The report focused on CVS’s use of contracts to, according to the report, limit competition and innovation. 

Asked by the Reporter for his reaction to the bombshell report, Cuban said the report validates long-standing concerns held by him and others that PBMs are the primary winners in today’s drug-pricing system, and PBMs like CVS are harming innovation and patients.

“For legislators working on healthcare legislation right now,” Cuban said, “this is where you fix the problem.”

Cuban outlined a series of specific policy changes aimed squarely at PBMs and insurer consolidation:

  • Require pharmacy purchases to be charged at net price after rebates, rather than full retail prices during deductible phases.
  • Move wholesale drug pricing to net pricing, eliminating rebate-driven gamesmanship that harms patients and independent pharmacies.
  • Mandate that cash drug purchases count toward insurance deductibles, allowing consumers to shop for lower prices.
  • Impose a moratorium on insurance carrier acquisitions and tighten rules around provider consolidation.
  • Standardize insurance contracts by provider type to cut administrative costs.
  • Investigate acquisitions of providers by pharmacy wholesalers and allow doctors to own hospitals.

Cuban said these reforms would immediately lower prices while improving cash flow and stability for independent pharmacies.

“The only loser in this is the PBMs,” Cuban said. “Everyone else gains.”

He added that if brand drugs were sold at net prices through wholesalers, Cuban’s company Cost Plus Drugs could mark them up modestly and dramatically cut the price of brand-name medications across the board.

Both Republicans and Democrats have come out to praise the House Judiciary Report as evidence that lawmakers should take action against CVS. 

Reps. Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) slammed CVS and cited the report as more evidence of potential antitrust violations. 

Republicans, including Arkansas’s attorney general Tim Griffin and Arkansas State Senate President Bart Hester posted on X highlighting the report as consistent with Arkansas’s work to reign in abusive PBM practices. 

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson weighed in as well, calling the Judiciary Committee’s findings “deeply concerning” and reinforcing the commission’s ongoing focus on PBMs, consolidation, and healthcare competition.

Cuban said the House report should generate action from lawmakers. “I can go on for days,” Cuban said. “This is a start.” 

With bipartisan concern mounting, state officials pressing from below, and PBM legislation already moving on Capitol Hill, the CVS report comes at a time when comprehensive PBM reform has a real chance of passing and becoming law.