Mark Cuban Calls Healthcare Pricing ‘Horrific’– Says Hospitals and Doctors Are ‘Sub Prime Lenders’ Forced To Raise Prices To Cover Losses

Mark Cuban calls health care prices ‘horrible’ — and says hospitals and doctors are ‘prime lenders’ — but suggests a way to fix things

Mark Cuban doesn’t hold back when it comes to his thoughts on the US health care system. On Bluesky, on December 10, he explained exactly why he believes the system is broken How to take steps to fix it.

His biggest gripe? Hospitals and physicians are forced into the role of “sublenders” because they bear 100% of the credit risk for unpaid deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance. “This is crazy,” he wrote, adding: “When they can’t collect payments, they raise prices to make up for that loss.” According to him, this leads to “horrific” health care pricing.

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the The ripple effects don’t stop there. According to Cuba, hospitals have to act like mortgage loan servicers, navigating a maze of administrative costs to collect those unpaid amounts. This cycle pushes many patients into medical debt, which often leads to bankruptcy. In Cuban’s view, this is not only incompetence, but a humanitarian catastrophe.

Insurance companies don’t get a free pass on his criticism either. Cuban notes that for more than 50 million Americans under these plans, insurance companies do not provide traditional insurance. Instead, they act as “care authorizers and payment processors,” determining approval and cost of care, with a primary focus on fraud prevention and medical necessity assessment.

Data from Statista indicates that in 2023, nearly 65% ​​of American workers were enrolled in self-funded health insurance plans, with employers bearing direct financial responsibility for employees’ medical claims.

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Cuban doesn’t think that role should fall to insurance companies at all. “This licensing process is a process we should not be asking in-house companies to go through,” he said. Instead, he believes that independent third-party administrators (TPAs) who have no financial incentives to approve or deny care should handle the process. “The first step is for self-insured entities to use third-party third parties and move away from insurance companies for this service,” he said.

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