Blog Post

Cost Plus Drugs Beats Health Insurance for High-Cost Generics

Chart of the Day: Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs Can Save Employer-Covered Patients Hundreds on Some Generics

June 1, 2026

By:

Karl Stark

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Dark blue and light blue bar graph showing that out-of-pocket drug costs for drugs costing more than $100 are higher for people with insurance. — Note: OOP = Out-of-pocket and MCCPDC = Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company

Can people on their employer’s plan save money by skipping insurance and buying generic medicines directly from the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company? The answer was yes for more expensive generics, according to a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Most generic prescriptions had low out-of-pocket costs, and the potential savings were modest, reported the team, which included LDI Senior Fellow Jalpa A. Doshi. But when patients’ prescriptions had higher copays or coinsurance, the direct-purchase Cost Plus option was often far cheaper. Once patients paid more than $15 out-of-pocket for a generic, the Cost Plus Drugs price would have been cheaper nearly 80% of the time, the study found.

The biggest savings accrued to people paying more than $100 out-of-pocket. In those cases, the typical patient paid about $140 using insurance but only about $25 via Cost Plus Drugs. Patients could save the most money on drugs for cancer, brain or mental health conditions, heart disease, and organ transplants.

The findings come as newer direct-to-consumer pharmacy models — including TrumpRx, which now links users to Cost Plus pricing for some medications — draw more attention as alternatives to traditional insurance.

The Annals study team, led by John K. Lin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, compared over 62 million prescription claims in 2024 with the company’s listed cash prices for generic drugs for 2025, including a $5.25 shipping fee.

The study had some important limitations. It included only people with employer insurance and did not study Medicare or Medicaid patients. It also did not compare prices with all discount programs like GoodRx or Amazon Pharmacy. Finally, while the study showed potential savings on paper, it did not track whether patients switched pharmacies or whether lower prices improved health outcomes.

The study, “Identifying Meaningful Patient Savings on Generics: Direct-to-Consumer Prices Versus Commercial Insurance Cost Sharing” was published May 26, 2026 in the Annals of Internal Medicine by John K. Lin, Jenny J. Xiang, Xiudong Lei, Sunita Desai, Erin Trish, Fumiko Chino, Meng Li, Sharon H. Giordano, Ying Xu, Changchuan Jiang, Jalpa A. Doshi, and Ya-Chen Tina Shih.