Solving prescription drug pricing in the US with Cost Plus Drugs & Capital RX CEOs | E1518

This Week in Startups

Jason Calacanis

Technology

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2022

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, we have two interviews with founders innovating in the US prescription drug market to bring prices down for consumers.

First up, Molly talks with Alex Oshmyansky, CEO of The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, about building a "parallel supply chain", the importance of transparency, and a breakdown of the "financial engineering" in the industry. (3:22)

Then, she talks to Capital RX CEO AJ Loiacono for a full breakdown on PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) and the opaque pharmaceutical supply chain. (40:35)

(0:00) Molly intros today's two interviews

(3:22) Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company CEO and Founder Alex Oshmyansky on operating a startup while still being a practicing doctor and Cost Plug Drugs' business model

(11:21) Harmonic - Get $4000 off at https://harmonic.ai/twist

(12:43) Alex explains the state of the US drug space, why they're trying to build a "parallel supply chain", the importance of transparency, and the origin story of the company

(23:44) Prometheus - Go to https://prometheusalts.com or download it on the App Store and use the access code TWIST to sign up

(25:11) Drug production, hot button drug issues

(32:16) Alex explains the "financial engineering" and profiteering in the prescription drug space

(39:15) BairesDev - Go to https://baires.dev/twist and get $10,000 off when you sign your first contract

(40:35) Molly intros the next guest: Capital RX CEO AJ Loiacono, who explains the convoluted and opaque pharmaceutical supply chain

(54:30) Understanding PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) and the broader healthcare industry

(1:04:09) AJ gets into his background, starting Capital RX, and how it fits into the ecosystem

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Okay, everybody, welcome to this weekend startups.
0:02.8	We have two amazing interviews for you today, both startups and both in the same industry
0:08.8	and both incredibly newsworthy, actually.
0:11.5	This is two amazing founder CEOs that are trying to disrupt drug pricing in the United States.
0:17.6	I understand that Congress occasionally takes a stab at this, but right now we're going
0:21.5	to leave it to the startups.
0:22.7	They're trying to figure out the root causes and fix them when it comes to the overpriced
0:29.0	U.S. prescription drug industry.
0:31.2	So first up, we have the CEO and founder of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, Alex
0:36.7	Oshmiatsky, Dr. Alex Oshmiatsky, who's an amazing interview.
0:41.8	He goes into the founding story, how hard it was to raise capital, his multiple incorporations,
0:47.7	and then getting Mark Cuban on board and having him up in his business all the time.
0:53.1	He also reveals his very funny but kind of sad inspiration for starting the company in
0:58.4	the first place.
0:59.4	Martin Shkreli is involved.
1:02.0	It's an excellent interview.
1:04.0	And then we're doing something new.
1:05.6	We're kind of doing a back-to-back pairing these two things together because we actually
1:09.7	ran this interview with CapitalRx CEO and founder AJ Loyakano on episode 1491 last month.
1:17.8	But it was this big, long, beefy episode like we do.
1:22.2	And since this is such a newsworthy and important topic and the two of them together do such
1:26.9	a fantastic job of explaining why drug pricing is so broken, we actually decided to just
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jason Calacanis, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jason Calacanis and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.