Mark Cuban: Drug Price Disrupter Explains How It Works

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

Announcer (00:03):
Welcome to Conversations on Health Care. This week we welcome renowned entrepreneur and popular
“Shark Tank” host Mark Cuban, who is seeking to disrupt the prescription drug market with his new
venture Cost Plus Drugs. Now, here are your hosts, Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli ( 00: 19 ):
Our guest today is a well - known entrepreneur, responsible for multiple startups in digital media,
software development and blockchain. The billionaire businessman is a popular co - host on the hit series
Shark Tank, and is a principal owner of the Da llas Mavericks basketball team.

Margaret Flinter (00:3 5 ):
He has increasingly lent his support on Shark Tank to startups that seek to address inequities in
American healthcare. And recently he launched his own enterprise, the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug
com pany, a public benefit company, an online direct - to - consumer pharmacy that aim is to take on the
high cost of prescription drugs.

Mark Masselli (00:5 5 ):
Well, Mark Cuban, welcome to Conversations on Healthcare.

Mark Cuban (0 0:58 ):
Thanks for having me. I 'm excited to be here.

Mark Masselli (01:0 0 ):
Yeah. And Mark, prescription drugs now are a major factor in the almost $4 trillion a year that gets spent
in healthcare in this country, and one out of five Americans can't afford at least one of their prescr iption
medication. And you say there are far too many middlemen in the prescription drug pipeline, which
significantly adds to the cost, and you're promising to radically be transparent about the cost. How does
that differ from the status quo?

Mark Cuban (01:3 0 ):
I mean, significantly. I mean, there's very much a vertically integrated environment right now where
health insurance companies own PBMs and own retail pharmacies and are expanding into other areas of
healthcare, and they keep on creating these fo rtresses where they control the left pocket and the right
pocket. And by having so much control, they're able to create an environment where pricing is opaque.
It's confusing, and they have a lot of control. I mean, and on top of that, because they're able to contract
with insurers and major corporations and consultants, they're able to play these games where they'll
say, "Okay, if you want access to all these lives, then you have to do business manufacturers the way we
want to do business." And that is unf ortunate and creates a lot of pricing distortion for patients.

Margaret Flinter (02: 28 ):
Well, Mark, our organization delivers care to a large vulnerable population, and I think we do a pretty
good job of helping patients access prescriptions at prices th ey can afford through various programs, but
it does take an enormous and concerted effort. Medicare itself had been blocked from negotiating drug
prices, but that's now changed under the President's Inflation Reduction Act. How do you think this new
develo pment is going to these issues that you've described in the marketplace?

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

Mark Cuban (03: 58 ):
I think it'll improve things, obviously, for the 10 drugs and then moving up to more drugs over a period
of time. I think it's great for people on insulin who ar e on Medicare. It doesn't do much of anything for
everybody else. That's just the reality. And so where there are out - of - pocket limits, the $2,000 will make
a big difference as well. But until you get to that $2,000 limit, there's going to be challenges fo r
Medicare patients. And on top of that, you have Medicare Advantage, which is completely distorted,
completely confusing and completely rewarding, not to the patients, but to the owner of the Medicare
Advantage Company. And so it's just there's still a lo t of messiness and that's one of the things we're
hoping to attack.

Margaret Flinter (03:4 5 ):
Great. Well, we look forward to hearing more about that. Thanks so much.

Mark Masselli (03: 49 ):
Mark, you just a few months into your new venture and you've just inked your first health plan deal,
Capital Blue Cross in Pennsylvania to provide low cost prescriptions to their members. This space is
highly competitive, so how did it come about and how will it wo rk for the consumers?

Mark Cuban (04: 08 ):
Well, for the consumers initially, and congratulations to the PBC in Harrisburg and Allentown Capital has
just been a phenomenal partner. The way it starts is they'll refer their patients to us and then using a
fo rm, they'll reimburse them. We're updating our software so that shortly it'll all be automated, so you'll
just buy through Cost Plus Drugs and everything from there in terms of applying to your deductibles and
we're applying to the right programs. All thos e things will be handled on an automated basis. And with
that, not only was capital our first, but we're also partnering with Prime Therapeutics, which allows us to
talk to a lot of other blues and we're hoping that leads to many other insurers to work wit h us. And
obviously we're also talking to many, many, many independents because other than the big three, it's
very difficult to control their own pricing and their paying premiums, and they're kind of caught in the
vortex of dealing with the PBMs, and so we're trying to yank them out of there and the response has
been great.

Margaret Flinter (05:1 5 ):
Well, Mark, it certainly seems that this approach could save billions of dollars each year for consumers,
but we point out, as I think our audience knows, it still only targets about 20% of the medication market,
if you will, the generics. And non - generic drugs make up about 80% of total drug costs in America today.
And these cost is people who are on them know can be just astronomical and often life - saving an d
absolutely essential. What do you think the chances are that your model could eventually expand in
ways to the non - generic market, which is so protected, of course, by trademarks and regulations?

Mark Cuban (0 5:58 ):
Absolutely, a hundred percent. We'll make our first announcement tomorrow for our first branded
partnership, which we're really excited about. We're in process of negotiation with many others. They
see the same problem. One of the challenges that manufacturers of branded drugs face is that th ey've
been villainized. Everybody perceived that using insulin as an example, everybody thinks that they're
responsible for the increasing cost to patients for insulin. When we know people in the industry know
that's just not the case. That the price that manufacturers sell insulin for has actually declined. If you
look at their revenues for insulin, they've declined. And so part of why they're excited to work with Cost

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

Plus Drugs is the transparency. Finally, now patients and others in the industry will be able to see exactly
what we pay and what we charge for insulin. Or for the drugs we're adding, not adding insulin, but the
drugs we're adding, I misspoke there. We like to add insulin and we're having conversations, but we're
not there yet.

Mark Masselli (07:0 2 ):
Mark, you said earlier that the pharmacy benefit managers play a big role in elevated drug costs, but we
often hear that drug research and development is also baked to the consumer, and some say these low
cost approaches will dampen the pace of n ew drug development. The Congressional budget office has
indicated this as an overstatement. What do you say?

Mark Cuban (07:2 4 ):
Well, you have to ask who's saying that It's not really the manufacturers that are saying it. It's the
lobbyists that are saying that. Manufacturers know that they're not going to bat a hundred percent on
their drugs. And so for certain there's a price associated with R&D, or if you're not doing the R&D
yourself, licensing or purchasing and then getting all the approvals and all the marketing, there's a price
associated with that. Some of them will fail at the trial level, some of them will fail in the market, and so
you've got to build all that into how they price. But what happens is because the manufacturers for the
most part, not always, but for the most part, don't actually have control of their own retail or net price,
that's where a lot of distortions come in.

(08: 08 ):
And so again, if this was just an open market and it was 1955 and the pharmacy bought from the drug
manufacturer, and you sold it to the patient, and this was truly free market, then you would see that
which drugs made it, which drugs failed, approximat ely how much they spent, and you would have an
understanding of a fair price to charge. Now, that's one element of it. Part two, and particularly as it
applies to specialty drugs, which are the ones that are very expensive and have the high levels of stick er
shock, there's a different equation for determining whether or not a price is fair. If there is a medication
that adds 10 years to your life and eliminates having to go to the hospital, is $5 million too much?

(08:5 4 ):
If the cost of going through care and being in the hospital to take care of that disease before the
medication was in place was greater than $5 million, well, somebody's saving money. The problem in all
of this is that it's not the insurance companies that are typically saving the money, and that creates the
push - pull that is creating problems as we talk about specialty medications. And that creates a lot of
challenges, depending on which side of the ball you're on for people going to the specialty drug
programs because the insurance compa nies don't want to pay for them. They're trying to force those
patients to specialty programs, which so effectively they're trying to get the manufacturers to provide
these high - end expensive medications for nothing so that the insurers don't have to pay w hat they're
obligated to pay.

(09: 47 ):
So all that said is I don't think that there's a world for specialty drugs where the current healthcare
insurers are able to model what their out - of - pocket expenses are going to be for specialty drugs because
it's al most impossible to project which ones are coming and which ones will succeed. It's almost
impossible to project the actual impact even though, what do they call it? Incel or Insight, I forget the
name of the organization that tries to do a cost benefit ana lysis. They try, but you've got, again, you've

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

got this challenge that what the insurers want, the people who we're looking to pay for it and what the
patient wants and what the manufacturer wants are not aligned at all.

(10:3 5 ):
And so I happen to think that over the next five years, it's going to be very politically expedient for some
administration or some politicians to say, you know what? We need a public - private partnership that
excludes insurance companies so that these high - end specialty drugs, eve n if they're 500,000, a million,
5 million, $20 million, whatever it may be, are evaluated to make sure that pricing is fair. Two, by having
a public - private partnership, one of the challenges for those specialty drug manufacturers is percentage
of valid p atients receiving the medication and them getting paid for it.

(11: 16 ):
So if there is a medication, let's just say for easy math, that has a million dollar price tag and has a
potential annual patient base of a thousand people, right? Right now, they're not going to be able to get
approvals for all thousand of those potential patients. And the reality is they're struggling to get any
percentage of those patients paid, and it is more high - end people like me who are able to afford those
things. And so throu gh a public - private partnership in some independent research, you'll be able to say
to them, "Look, you can't charge a million dollars for these thousand patients, but we'll guarantee you
that all thousand patients will be able to pay for it and we will bu y your drug from you for all thousand,
but you're only going to charge 500,000 so that you net out at 500 million in revenue as opposed to your
hope for $1 billion in revenue, a million times a thousand."

(12:1 4 ):
"And let's work that way so that it's fai r to you as a business, you have incentives to keep on releasing,
buying or developing these specialty drugs. It's fair to the patients, all of them who have valid
prescriptions from their doctors, from the provider are able to get it, which is the most im portant part."
And we take the organizations that are the inhibitors, the private insurers who don't want to pay for it
and don't see the financial benefit from it because across all the insurance companies, if they paid out a
billion dollars, their math p robably says, in their models that they're not going to get a billion dollars in
savings. So they do all they can to prevent paying for it.

(13:0 0 ):
And so we need to be honest and straightforward and have some transparency, and if the
manufacturers of th e specialty drugs are willing to do that and we're able to everybody get on the same
page, then I think we save a lot of lives and improve the healthcare system. If they don't, and we have
this continued push - pull as always happens where the insurers do th eir best to deny claims or pre -
authorizations, then we have problems. That was a longer answer than you wanted, wasn't it?

Mark Masselli (13: 27 ):
No, it was good.

Margaret Flinter (13: 29 ):
It was a compelling answer and I think we have another interview, another show perhaps in our future
to really tease this out more. I can tell you it's pretty awful on the ground where the patients live as this
issue is dealt with on a regular basis. But let me pivot just a bit, Mark. The Covid pandemic amplified so
man y shortcomings, inadequacies in our healthcare system and supply chain was right at the top. We
were caught short on so many things we needed to protect our healthcare workers and the public. But

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

you are going to actually be scaling up your own drug manufa cturing factories for Cost Plus Drugs. So tell
us about that and what other supply chain issues do you see as ripe for disruption?

Mark Cuban (14: 18 ):
So effectively, there are a lot of drugs that go into shortages, particularly generic drugs where there' s
just not enough of a market for manufacturers to continuously produce them. And so what ends up
happening is they just jack up the price, we've seen that happen multiple times. Or you get in a situation
where you have sterile water, like now, which is ha rd to come by, and even though it's not hard to
make, there's just no manufacturers to do it. So with Cost Plus Drugs we created, we're building, we're
finishing out actually, a manufacturing plant in Dallas, Texas that is robotically driven so that it onl y
takes us four hours to turn our manufacturing from one injectable to the next.

(15:0 1 ):
And so starting with things like sterile water, excuse me, we'll talk to all the hospitals and all the
providers that need it. We'll come up with a fair price that c overs our cost because as a manufacturer,
we can't just do a straight cost plus 15%. Our costs are much higher as a manufacturer, but we'll be
compelling transparent price and we'll make it available for whatever injectables are in short supply.
And then w hen we fill that need, it takes four hours for us to cycle to the next drug. We'll do the next
one, then four hours, we'll do the next one, and then the next one and so on and so forth. And if it
works out well, we have plenty of room to expand to add more and more for oral medications, you
name it, we'll be able to expand to it presuming that everything goes the way we expect it to.

Mark Masselli (15:5 0 ):
Mark, one of the health companies you develop is Unite Genomics, which you say is focused in on
advan cing medicine through large - scale analysis of genomic and health data, especially for rare disease.
How does Unite Genomics dovetail off similar efforts like NIH, All of Us Research Project or the patients
like me, and perhaps more broadly, how will genomi cs and personalized medicine shift the future drug
development landscape?

Mark Cuban (16: 18 ):
Well, the honest answer to Mark is, I don't know. I've been so focused on Cost Plus the last few years.
The guys at Genomics know their stuff and they run their show really, really well. But just generically,
generally, our bodies are one big math equation. We don't know how many variables are in that
equation, and we don't know what all the variables are, but every single day with advancements and
chips and GPUs and just about every other core component of artificial intelligence, we're learning more
and more and more about our bodies and we're aggregating more and more information from all the
experiments and all the tests and all the trials and all the databases that we're able to have access to.
And when you start mixing those together over time, you truly do get to a point where you have more
and more personalized medicine, and that's part of their goal, to be part of that revolution. Again, I wish
I had just l ooked up, I just haven't had the time just to keep up with them. I'm just trying to keep up with
what's going on in Cost Plus.

Margaret Flinter (17:2 2 ):
Well, you have a lot to keep track of. And this question may be in the same category, but maybe not.
You're certainly well familiar with startups and the challenges, and I assume both success and failure,
but in healthcare of course, there's so much at sta ke with failure in any element of healthcare. What
have your startup experiences in other areas taught you about how you're going to go about this

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

process with your new company doing it without harm? Share with us what you've learned about the
process.

Ma rk Cuban (17:5 4 ):
I mean, data matters, care matters, being transparent matters because look, there's no mistake - free
anything anywhere, whether it's healthcare or selling nachos at a Mavs game, there's always going to be
mistakes. The challenge for patien ts as it applies to healthcare is we're not as transparent as we need to
be. And when you're not transparent, then people don't trust it. And the reality is the number one
product that Cost Plus Drugs sells is trust. If you think about the process of getti ng a prescription these
days, typically you go to the doctor and if it's the first time the doctor says, "Sorry, you need to get this,"
whatever it is. "What's your pharmacy?" And then you just get the prescription sent to your pharmacy,
and then when you get to the pharmacy, the pharmacy doesn't know what they're going to charge you
until they ring it up and you don't know what you're going to be charged.

(18: 46 ):
You're hoping all your insurance covers it and you don't know. Typically, you may or may not know your
copay, and then you don't know what all your options are. So I think true missing piece as it relates to
your question, Margaret, is transparency. We have to get to the point of trust. We trust our doctors, but
look at just hospitals. Everybody wants to trust hospitals. Everybody pretty much does trust the doctors
in those hospitals, but when it comes to organizational or administrative, they can't even get them to do
what's legally required of them with transparent pricing on their websites. The re's people paying the
ridiculously low $100 a day or whatever it is, and who are ignoring the obligation to really provide the
numbers in a way that's understandable.

(19: 36 ):
I mean, I had a CT colonoscopy and I had a CT just because I do them every cou ple of years and I just pay
cash price. I don't even go through my insurance simply because, A, we self - insure and B, I kind of like
going through all the hospital spreadsheets to see what the pricing is, but I'm certainly the exception
and not the rule. W ithout transparency, there's no trust. And when you have organizations creating
reasons for, and hospitals providers creating reasons for them not to be trusted, then that's where
things go south and they become politicized. There's just so many ways that we can improve it, but
everybody's fighting for their next dollar instead of fighting for their next patient. Not everybody, that's
not fair, but from the administrative side.

(20:2 4 ):
I mean, look, in healthcare, what is it? 21% of the total cost of heal thcare in this country is
administrative, and there's so many easy things that you can do. You could standardize contracts, right?
Network contract for every hospital, use a standardized contract that is reviewed, whether it's annually
or bi - annually, what ever it is. Then just the numbers change and cut the cost and all the retail or all the
detailed research that has to be done every time someone walks in the door with a different network or
a different insurance plan, and it has to go up the flagpole six feet deep, and then the provider does
everything possible to complicate it. My mom died of cancer this past February.

Mark Masselli (21:0 5 ):
Yeah, sorry to hear that.

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

Mark Cuban (21: 07 ):
Thank you. And she went in to talk to the doctors and the doctor says she needed a PET scan. "Okay,
let's get her a PET scan while she's here." No, you can't get a PET scan while you're in the hospital. You
have to leave the hospital and come back more tha n three days later so they get paid the most. My
mom was like, "No, that's ridiculous." Do you know what it costs her and it costs me and it costs my
family? Because this is the ridiculousness that patients have to face. And it's not like the hospitals don 't
know what they're doing. When they up code, when they recode, when they dual code, we saw all the
article in the New York Times for Medicare Advantage.

Mark Masselli (21:5 3 ):
Yeah.

Margaret Flinter (21:5 3 ):
Right.

Mark Masselli (21:5 3 ):
Medicare Advantage.

Mark Cuban (21:5 5 ):
That's insane. Put me in charge. I'll make a criminal if you do that, period, end a story. Because once you
create distrust in the healthcare system, you get what we had with Covid where people don't trust, they
don't believ e anybody and what they're saying. We don't know what something's going to cost before
we go to a doctor, and there's some trying to create transparency, but the games that people play at
providers. A friend of mine runs the hospital. It is weird how it al l played out. Guys I grew up with run,
there's several hospitals, and so I keep in touch with them and they had built this building and they were
asking me what I thought was the best approach to getting more people to the building.

(22: 36 ):
And I was lik e, "There's only one answer. Sell the MF building. Take that and reduce the rates and make
it more accessible. You don't need a fancy building. You need the equipment you need, you need the
doctors, you need. You don't need fancy buildings." Yet that's wha t you see on every hospital campus,
fancy buildings. And I worked with a group and I asked a very simple question, and if this is too far afield,
just tell me.

Mark Masselli (23:0 2 ):
No.

Margaret Flinter (23:0 2 ):
No. Go ahead.

Mark Cuban (23:0 4 ):
I'm li ke, "Toronto Canada, right? Their real estate is more expensive than Manhattan. Their doctors get
paid the same, their nurses get paid the same as hospitals in Manhattan. Why are all their procedures
less than Medicare?" And it's really simple when you sta rt looking at it. One, they're mostly non - private
rooms. I actually had kidney stones in Toronto one time. They put me just a little curtain around me,
which I was fine with. They took care of me, but it was not a private room and I was great. In our
hospi tals, once you get past the municipal hospitals, it's all private rooms. And in Canada, they pay for all

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

the doctor's liability insurance. In Canada, the hospitals are sure they'll get paid for all the patients that
come through the door. These are little things that we complicate here in the United States through
DISH and no liability compensation, and everybody's trying to be fancy when you do that. And there's
not a lot of transparency. People aren't going to trust and it's going to be more expensive and people
are going to go without healthcare, and that's just insane.

Mark Masselli (24: 17 ):
Mark, on one side, you're battling on the trust and transparency side, and you're coming up against on
the other side, some legacy players in the big pharma world w ith a lot of skin in the game. CVS Caremark
made about 150 billion in prescription drug space in 2021 alone. Ann Walmart and Costco have well
established supply chains and market share. You've got Amazon turning to direct consumer drug
purchasing as well, use a base basketball analogy. How do you out shoot the legacy teams? What's your
edge in this really crowded field and when so much profit is hanging in the balance?

Mark Cuban (2 4 : 56 ):
Well, there's this old saying I use all the time, when you run with the elephants, there's the quick and
the dead. And we're really, really quick. We're agile, we're evolving all the time. We started off just mail
order. Hopefully within the next 60 to 90 days we'll have a discount cards. So you'll be able to pick up at
a local pharmacy at our pricing because they'll buy from us and agree to our pricing. And on top of that,
rather than some of the other discount cards do, which is charge the pharmacies for the traffic, we'll
actually pay the pharmacies for fulfillment. Or I should say, we'll let them charge, which I think the
pharmacies are going to love. So that's one way to do it. You look where the greed is. Jeff Bezos family
said, "Your margin is my opportunity." And that's exactly what's going on here.

(25:4 3 ):
Cost Pl us Drugs already has more than a million accounts. Nine months in more than a million accounts,
and we're growing rapidly. By the time we finish this, we might be at a 1.1 million. And so if we get
enough of a base, people are going to want to keep on work ing with us no matter what the other ones
do. Maybe they come along and match our pricing, that's okay by me. Maybe they come along and do
the same thing and just copy us, that's okay by me. If the net result is okay, Cost Plus isn't as big as it
might've otherwise been, but everybody's playing Cost Plus 15%, hello, problem solved. And so of
course that's easier for me to say than for all that to happen.

(26: 27 ):
But at the same time, when you're as big and public, excuse me, as the big three and you're as vertically
integrated, and there's so much right pocket, left pocket, they create or buy this company where they
send some margin there and then that company buys from another one of their subsidiaries and they
send some margin there. It's awful, awful ha rd for them to be cost competitive. There's just too many
layers and too much hierarchy for that to work. They might be able to absorb some losses to try to
combat us, but I think we'll be okay. And I think, again, our number one product is not a medicatio n. Our
number one product is trust. And if those other outlets were truly trusted, we wouldn't have any
customers.

Mark Masselli (27:1 1 ):
Mark, I heard you say in the last answer to Margaret's question that if someone put you in charge, is this
an announcement of any candidacy that we can report on?

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

Mark Cuban (27:2 0 ):
No, no, no. Absolutely not. No. My family would just own me. Absolutely not. But some of these
providers need skin in the game in terms of their obligations to living up to the law. A hundred dollars
fine per day isn't going to make anybody change their actions. There's just so many fraud and pay a fine.
That's not going to make anybody change their actions. There's just so much money involved, and that
money keeps on getting bigger a nd the fines become a smaller, smaller percentage. The minute
somebody that works anywhere in that food chain in a major corporation is that fear of going to jail, it
all changes. It all changes.

Margaret Flinter (28:0 5 ):
Well, Mark, I know you are comple tely focused on Cost Plus Drugs right now, but I've read you're also
pretty interested in the potential for new technologies like wearables and AI to improve health in that
little bit of time. You might have to think about those things right now. What's ex citing you right now
about the growing potential of AI and health sensors, digital health, what else out there captures your
imagination and your investors like?

Mark Cuban (28:3 4 ):
All the above. I mean, I'm a big believer that there's two types of compa nies in this country, those who
are great at AI and everybody else. If you look at the top 10 market share companies that are public,
they're great at AI, no exceptions, the Apples, the Googles, etc. And they're also great at acquiring data.
Now, we can ar gue about the privacy issues, but I think the ability to use AI for personal healthcare is
only going to improve. I got criticized for this six, seven years ago when I talked about it online, but I get
my blood tested every four to six months because I wan t my baseline to be my baseline, not Mark and I
being base lined against the exact same numbers for what a white male in our age group and Mark's
luck, younger and handsomer than I am, but in our age group is supposed to be benchmarked at.

(29: 27 ):
That's just crazy. And so I started getting my own blood work. I go to Quest Diagnostics or wherever,
capitalize that, connect it with my iWatch and capture that data. And the point being that the more data
we have available to us, I think the smarter decisions we can make as patients. Now, doctors will tell you
that sometimes too much data is a bad thing because a lot of patients don't know what to do with it,
and they get caught up in a vortex or a rabbit hole trying to figure out their own healthcare. But then
again, that goes back to trust. If we're able to trust our providers, if we're able to trust our doctors and
we don't rush our doctors and we give them a chance to explain what's going on to the patients and
how this data actually impacts their lives and how it is or is possibly not useful, then we start getting
better outcomes.

(30: 18 ):
And I think AI has a real role to play. And those are the things I look at. I invested in a company, Genes
Tesis, golly, seven years ago I think. What I didn't know when I invested in they're out of Cincinnati, is
every one of the organs in our body emit an electrical signal. I had no idea. And there's scanners that
capture that electrical signal, and the first one they work with is the he art. So they capture the electrical
signal that comes out of the heart. They save it as an audio file, believe it or not, and then they run it
through machine learning AI. And based off of tens of thousands of examples, they're able to correlate
what issue s the patient might be having with their heart. Because anybody our age knows, again, Mark,
you guys are a lot younger than me, that you feel something in your chest, you immediately get nervous.

Transcript by Rev.com

This transcript was exported on Apr 29 , 2025 - view latest version here .

(31: 08 ):
So many people go to the hospital and there's no q uick way to resolve what that is. So you might get
checked in, you might get sent home. It's really, really difficult. But using AI and Genes Tesis, they're
going through their trials now. The hope is you get scanned, you run it through the AI, and it tell s you
with some level of accuracy the most likely thing that's going on with your heart, right? And is it AFib, is
it whatever? And so things like that to me have huge upside, things that make us smarter, make us more
efficient, allow us to do it for less. Those are all things that I think AI will drive and that I get excited
about.

Mark Masselli (31:5 1 ):
We've been speaking with entrepreneur and Shark Tank host, Mark Cuban, who has launched an online
entity, Cost Plus Drugs, seeking to shake up the prescr iption drug market with low - cost generic
prescription drugs. You can follow our show and learn more about all of our guests at chcradio.com.
Thank you to our audience for joining us today. And Mark, thank you so much for joining us and we'll
continue to fo llow your innovations.

Mark Cuban (32:1 5 ):
Thanks guys for having me on. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Mark Masselli (32: 18 ):
All right, great.

Margaret Flinter (32: 19 ):
Thanks so much.

Mark Masselli (32: 19 ):
Take care.

Mark Cuban (32: 19 ):
Thanks guys.

Margaret Flinter (32:2 1 ):
This copyrighted program is produced by Conversations on Health Care and cannot be reproduced or
retransmitted in whole or in part without the express written consent from Community Health Center.
Inc. The v iews expressed by guests are their own, and they do not necessarily reflect the opinion of
conversations on healthcare or its affiliated entities.

Transcript by Rev.com