Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban isn’t letting the absurdity of America’s health care costs slide — when a scan can cost more than some used cars.
On Saturday, Cuban resumed his crusade for health care reform by highlighting what he sees as a clear pricing failure. “Explain to me why an insurance company would pay $2500 for an MRI when there’s a center down the street that does it for $350?” He wrote in X.
The question was not accidental. This came during a thread where Cuban was already talking about the massive influence of pharmacy benefit managers and large insurance companies.
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“I’m all for PBM reform,” he wrote earlier in the day. “But know that the biggest PBMs are owned by the biggest insurance companies … they’re too big to care … the employer, the patient, the state, the hospital, the physician — if they can charge you, they will.”
That’s when the user pushed back, arguing that insurers only pay bills submitted by providers and that they don’t set sky-high prices. Cuban’s response – his rhetorical MRI question – cuts to the complexity with a vague price comparison.
The message was clear: Insurance companies have no incentive to control costs when they profit from a bloated system. And for Cubans, it’s not just inefficient—it’s exploitative.
“They don’t need to be,” Cuban added in a follow-up. “And that’s the point. They raise the price.”
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Others quickly gave real-world examples. One person said their MRI was quoted at more than $1,500 with insurance but only cost $275 when paying in cash. Another said their scan was listed between $1,200 and $3,200 with insurance — but only $212 at a local imaging center.
Cuban, who co-founded low-cost pharmacy platform Cost Plus Drugs, has spent the past few years attacking middlemen and opacity in the health care system. His strategy has focused on cutting the layers of bureaucracy that pad prices without delivering value. That same frustration is now aimed squarely at insurers, who he believes continue to reward inflated fees rather than steer patients toward affordable options.
He has pushed Congress to pressure PBMs and insurers to shed their overlapping interests, calling for greater transparency and more consumer benefits.
