How Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs is revolutionizing pharma (w/ CEO Alex Oshmyansky) | Rapid Response
About Alex Oshmyansky
- Founder & CEO, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co., revolutionizing drug pricing transparency (2022-24)
- MD from Duke, PhD in Mathematics from Oxford as a Marshall Scholar, BA at age 18
- Trained at Harvard (surgery), Johns Hopkins (pediatric radiology), Stanford adjunct faculty
- Recipient, 2024 Rapid Response award at Masters of Scale Summit for industry disruption
- Previously founded Altitude Medical; 14+ years reducing hospital infections
| 26:32
With the help of co-founder Mark Cuban, Cost Plus Drugs CEO Alex Oshmyansky is radically re-engineering the pharma marketplace and dramatically cutting the price for many prescription drugs. Oshmyansky joins Rapid Response host Bob Safian to share his amazing journey — from struggling as an immigrant in primary school to starting college at age 13, how medical practice led to entrepreneurship, plus reimagining his original plan on advice from the legendary incubator Y Combinator. Oshmyansky explains how Cost Plus Drugs stumbled into success, turning adversaries into allies and harnessing patience as a superpower.
Chapters
00:49 How Cost Plus Drugs can sell prescription drugs at a cheaper cost
02:59 How Martin Shkreli inspired Alex Oshmyansky
04:14 The origins of Cost Plus Drugs
07:09 Inside Cost Plus Drugs’ manufacturing process
11:00 Alex Oshmyansky’s journey from a physicist prodigy
11:58 Scaling Cost Plus Drugs’ manufacturing operations
13:20 Scaling via word-of-mouth marketing
14:21 Convincing manufacturers despite the pharmacy benefit managers
16:16 Can the government help regulate the price of drugs?
17:53 Is Big Pharma to blame or the PBMs?
19:03 Why Alex Oshmyansky still practices radiology
20:18 Alex’s educational journey
22:09 The patience required to get through the bureaucracy of healthcare
23:31 The future of Cost Plus Drugs
25:31 What’s at stake for you and Cost Plus Drugs?
