U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) took a broad swipe at President Trump and his administration on Friday. On social media Sanders, a persistent Trump critic, wrote: “Health care? ‘You’re on your own.’ Housing? ‘Nothing we can do.’ Grocery prices? ‘You’re out of luck.’ $200 billion for another war? ‘No problem!’ Americans—Democrats, Republicans, independents—are SICK AND TIRED of endless wars. We need to invest here at home.”
Without addressing the war spending, billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of Cost Plus Drugs, took aim mainly at Sanders’s health insurance assertion, comparing the situation to other sectors that receive taxpayer backstops: “Let me help rephrase for you Bernie. Need a loan for college so you can party for a semester and drop out? Taxpayers will loan you money for it. Need an SBA loan for your business? Taxpayers will guarantee it. For a house? Taxpayers will guarantee it. And local gov will give you money for your first down payment! Get sick or are in an accident and you can’t afford your deductible, insurance company denied prescribed care or are uninsured ? You are on your own.”
Let me help rephrase for you Bernie.
Need a loan for college so you can party for a semester and drop out? Taxpayers will loan you money for it.
Need an SBA loan for your business ? Taxpayers will guarantee it.
For a house ? Taxpayers will guarantee it. And local gov… https://t.co/kOcO5tj14A
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) March 28, 2026
Cuban added: “Let me add Bernie, the one debt not a single one of us will ever pay off till the day we die? Our health insurance premiums. And before you go in and on about single payer, ask @claudeai to take a look at your proposed Single Payer legislation. You want the Sec of HHS to run it. You can’t have a political appointee run an apolitical position And you expect every provider and doctor to accept whatever rate is set by Medicare. Big hospitals don’t know their costs. They couldn’t do a BOM for any procedure. They have negligible transparency. If they don’t know their costs, and you don’t know their costs, how is it possible for taxpayers, caregivers and patients to get a fair deal? And the concept of ‘every other country does it ‘ ignores the fact that they all converted decades and decades ago, long before you and your peers allowed the extreme vertical integration we face now. Which leads to the question. @BernieSanders , why have you not advocated for the Break Up Big Medicine Bill?”
The Break Up Big Medicine Act, which was introduced in February by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), aims “to prohibit pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, and prescription drug or medical device wholesalers from being under common ownership with certain medical service providers, and for other purposes.”
[Note: The three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) manage 80% of prescription drug claims, while just three prescription drug wholesalers control 98% of U.S. drug distribution. Cuban has been on a mission to change this de factor pharma monopoly.]
In a statement, Warren said: “There’s no question that massive health care companies have created layers of complexity to jack up the price of everything from prescription drugs to a visit to the doctor. The only way to make health care more affordable is to break up these health care conglomerates.” She added, “Our bill would be a monumental step towards ending the stranglehold that corporate giants have on our broken health care system.”