Dear Patient,
It’s Friday, which means later tonight I’ll kick back and watch one of my favorite guilty pleasures: Shark Tank.
If you haven’t seen Shark Tank, it’s a television show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to wealthy investors. One of the most famous of the sharks, billionaire Mark Cuban, made news this week when he announced he’s launching an online pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs, aimed at lowering the price of generic drugs.
The profit-driven healthcare system in this country means Americans pay astronomical prices for prescription drugs (and just about every other health intervention). Cuban’s venture is a mind-bogglingly simple solution—using his name and influence to negotiate with drug manufacturers, then sell directly to consumers. And to further simplify matters, they don’t take insurance. With costs so low, there’s no need for it.
I feel like this is how healthcare should work. Medical interventions that are cheap to administer and proven to work should just be easy to access and pay for. Right?
Few of us have the capital to do anything on the magnitude of Cuban’s online pharmacy. But as I’ve said before, here, and here, we are all healers. We can start with the people around us and go from there. Because we all have the power to build more resilient, more inclusive solutions for everyone.
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist
You had me at “they don’t take insurance.”