Billionaire investor Mark Cuban challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Tuesday to back a bipartisan bill to break up healthcare conglomerates, warning that failing to support it would mean accepting that “people are dying because they can’t afford care” as the national debt continues to climb above $40 trillion.
Clash Over Taxes
In a post on X, Cuban said the wealthy should “pay taxes on what you earn,” calling for the elimination of loopholes and raising taxes on top earners back to pre-2017 levels.
Cruz responded, accusing Cuban of contradicting himself given his recent support for Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, and crediting Trump-era tax cuts with pre-pandemic low unemployment.
Cuban told Cruz to “look at our deficit” and “how much we pay in interest every minute of every day.”
U.S. national debt crossed $40 trillion in August, equivalent to roughly $116,486 per citizen. It currently stands at $40.2 trillion.
The Congressional Budget Office projects federal debt will rise from 101% of GDP this year to 120% by 2036, with annual interest costs more than doubling to $2.1 trillion over the same period.
Break Up Big Medicine
The entrepreneur, who founded Cost Plus Drugs, said his decision to campaign with Talarico hinged on his support for the bipartisan “Break Up Big Medicine” bill from Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), which Cuban said would cut the deficit and make drug prices “drop like a rock.”
The bill would prohibit companies from owning both a health insurer and a pharmacy benefit manager, and would allow regulators to force violators to sell assets or divest profits if they fail to comply.
“A true capitalist would understand how these economics work,” Cuban said, asking Cruz whether he was “ready to whip up support among Republicans” or preferred “people dying because they can’t afford care.”
Talarico is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the 2026 Senate race.
Cuban Has Long Pushed to Break Up ‘Big Medicine’
Cuban has repeatedly called to break up large healthcare conglomerates, accusing vertically integrated insurers and providers of “abusing their market positions” while regulators failed to stop consolidation over the past decade.
“There is a reason we have anti-trust laws,” Cuban said in May. “If you want less government in healthcare, it can’t happen until these conglomerates are broken up.”
He has also criticized lawmakers for not backing the Hawley-Warren bill sooner, claiming several Democratic senators privately supported it but wouldn’t publicly endorse it without more Republican support.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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