Business

Trump, Cuban Come Together To Lower Drug Prices

By Erica Coleman · May 19, 2026

Mark Cuban stood at the White House on Monday and shook hands with President Trump in front of cameras while Trump called the partnership “one of the greatest breakthroughs in healthcare cost reduction in modern history.”

Nine months ago, Cuban was on stage at a Kamala Harris campaign rally.

Trump announced Monday that TrumpRx — the administration’s direct-to-consumer prescription drug website launched earlier this year — is adding more than 600 generic medications, dramatically expanding a platform that had previously listed only a few dozen brand-name drugs. The expansion comes via partnerships with three outside platforms: Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug Company, Amazon Pharmacy, and GoodRx.

The partnership is real and the drugs are cheaper. Cost Plus has operated since 2022 on the specific premise that pharmaceutical middlemen — pharmacy benefit managers, insurance company formularies, GPO contracting systems — are the primary reason drug prices are so high in the United States. By selling directly to consumers at cost plus a modest markup, Cuban’s company has made hundreds of generic medications available at prices dramatically below what most insurance-linked pharmacies charge. Before Monday, TrumpRx users were largely redirected to Cost Plus for generics anyway. The official partnership simply makes that routing explicit and adds GoodRx and Amazon as additional options.

Cuban, who describes himself as a political independent, campaigned publicly and enthusiastically for Harris in 2024. He attended her rallies, endorsed her publicly, and used his public platform to criticize Trump. Trump responded at the time by calling Cuban a “Radical Left Democrat.” Their appearance together Monday represents one of the more striking political pivots in recent Washington memory.

Cuban’s explanation is consistent with what he has said publicly for months: he cares about drug pricing as a policy issue and supports whoever is actually moving the needle on it. “Everyone wants me to rip on TrumpRx,” Cuban wrote in a recent social media post. “Reality is, it’s saving patients money on IVF and a few other drugs. A lot of money.” Before Monday’s announcement, he had said the one thing Trump could do to make TrumpRx better would be to add the drugs available on his own site. That is precisely what happened.

Trump described the shared motivation he and Cuban have in common: both had parents who struggled with drug costs and both have personal experience watching someone they love navigate an American healthcare system that makes affording medication difficult. Trump said he hoped TrumpRx would become “the Amazon of drugs” — a framing that was awkward given that Amazon Pharmacy is one of the three partners in the announcement.

The announcement was attended by RFK Jr., Dr. Mehmet Oz, and the White House’s Chief Design Officer — suggesting the administration views TrumpRx as both a policy win and a branding exercise. The question most healthcare analysts are watching is whether the platform produces meaningful savings for uninsured or high-deductible patients, who are the people most likely to benefit. For patients with comprehensive insurance and low copays, the platform offers little that their existing pharmacy coverage doesn’t already provide.

For patients without that coverage, 600 generic medications at Cost Plus prices is genuinely useful. The politics of how that happened are something else entirely.