Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus drug company will begin manufacturing its drugs in Texas this week, cofounder and CEO Dr. Alex Oshmansky announced Monday during a White House roundtable on lowering health care costs.
“Coast Plus Drugs is proud to bring pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the United States, with advanced robotics and AI computer vision technology,” Osmianski said. “It allows us to switch from one drug type to another very quickly—in principle, within four hours.
“That way, whatever product is in short supply, we can start making that product.”
The company, which Oshmyansky launched in January 2022 with billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, will be the first to produce commercial batches of epinephrine, which is used in EpiPens, and norepinephrine, which is used to raise and maintain blood pressure. For hospital patients in intensive care. Oshmyansky did not mention specific dates, saying only that the production of the two drugs will begin “this week”, “a little later” by Children’s Oncology Medicine.
“No parent should be told that the chemotherapy their child needs is not available,” Osmianski said. “No one should have to get the life-saving ICU drugs they need or have their surgery postponed because generic, cheaper drugs simply aren’t available in the United States in 2024.”
Cost Plus Drugs’ 22,000-square-foot pharmaceutical facility in Dallas’ Deep Ellum neighborhood was originally slated for completion in late 2022. As important as the drugs themselves is the way they are produced, Oschmianski said: without middlemen.
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White House Roundtable Talks with Pharmaceutical Industries
The topic of intermediate pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, was discussed during a White House roundtable Monday afternoon. Cuban was also in attendance, along with public and private leaders, including Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Sandra Clark, COO of Blue Shield of California.
PBMs, Cuban said, have “hung on independent pharmacies,” among other strategies that take advantage of the most vulnerable patients and “keep the stock price on health.”
Cost-plus drugs are based on the simplicity of buying drugs and selling them directly to consumers at low, transparent prices, Cuban emphasized. The online retailer now carries 2,500 drugs and plans to offer them as legally as possible.
PBMs work with pharmaceutical wholesalers to set up so-called source programs, which control 90 percent of drug purchases in the U.S., Oshmyansky explained. Cost Plus Drugs will be as open about its manufacturing costs as This is about the versions it currently sells.
“That way, we’re profitable and sustainable,” Oshmyansky said, “but never forced.”
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