Don’t count on billionaire investor Mark Cuban, a major booster of Kamala Harris in 2024, supporting a comeback bid in 2028.
When asked at POLITICO’s Health Care Summit Tuesday whether he wants to see the former vice president run for the nation’s top job again, Cuban quickly responded, “No.”
“Don’t remember, don’t care,” he said when asked to recall her health care message during her short-lived 2024 presidential campaign. “Those days are gone.”
Harris signaled earlier this month she’s seriously considering entering the 2028 Democratic field.
“Listen, I might, I might. I’m thinking about it,” Harris told the Rev. Al Sharpton at the National Action Network convention in New York.
Cuban, a Harris surrogate during the last campaign cycle, said he’s not trying to promote a specific candidate now.
“I’m trying to change how fucked up this health care industry is right now, and that’s all I care about,” he said.
Cuban said he’d be open to supporting a Republican who shared his reform goals and praised President Donald Trump and his health department’s efforts to lower drug prices and speed drug trials.
“They’re trying to make it easier for folks like us,” he said.
Cuban lamented the lack of public support for legislation by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to counter health care industry consolidation that they say has driven up prices, saying there are a “lot of wimps in this town.”
Cuban said he’s heard that “five or six” Democrats want to support the bill but are waiting for Republicans to come up with an equal number of cosponsors.
“Until you break those companies up and make them divest their non-insurance assets, they own your health care,” he said.
Still, support for going after industry consolidation is growing on Capitol Hill. Last week, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) called out “health insurance empires” at a hearing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy at the hearing said he thought the Federal Trade Commission should step up antitrust enforcement.
Cuban also referenced the government’s powers to break up conglomerates at the summit: “FTC do your job,” he said.
Brand-name drugmakers are “more afraid” of insurance companies’ and pharmacy benefit managers’ power over how their products are priced for consumers than Trump’s drug-pricing pressure campaign, said Cuban, who co-founded Cost Plus Drugs, an online pharmacy that bypasses the traditional PBM model.
PBMs are companies that negotiate drug prices on behalf of insurers and large companies.
“A tariff is expensive. Pushing you from tier one on a formulary to tier five requiring coinsurance is death — it will wipe out your company,” he said.
The minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks and former star of ABC’s “Shark Tank” said an independent presidential candidate running on a health care affordability platform would “do really well.”
“But it won’t be me,” Cuban added.
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