The company, founded in January 2022, aims to reduce the cost of prescription medication by circumventing drug middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers, who have been accused of inflating drug prices for insurers in exchange for rebates from pharmaceutical companies. Those rebates are supposed to be passed along to consumers, but because the process is not subject to reporting requirements, it’s easy for benefit managers to pocket the cash for themselves.

It’s a lot of cash. In 2017, CVS Caremark and OptumRX — two of the three largest middlemen — took nearly a quarter billion dollars from Ohio Medicaid. Rounding out the trio is Express Scripts, which sometimes paid itself more than 100 times the cost of drugs it could have obtained more cheaply in negotiations for a public employee insurance plan in West Virginia. Together, those companies represent more than 80% of Americans with prescription drug coverage. All three are under federal investigation.

I feel safe in saying that nobody likes (or will ever like) these guys, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying to win us over. The latest attempt came from David Joyner, president of CVS Caremark, who took to the paid pages of Fortune magazine to defend the big three as titans going “toe-to-toe” with drug companies, “driving competition” and “negotiating discounts” that “make the difference” between affording your medication or going without. All of that happens out in the open, he added, without explaining how he could plausibly claim transparency in a column defending an industry currently under investigation for a lack of transparency, thus necessitating the column in the first place. (Is this what an aneurysm feels like?)

“We are creating a more transparent environment for drug pricing in this country, and it’s not just for 2,500 drugs,” he wrote with nary a care for specifics or the patent absurdity of the statement. “It’s for every drug from every manufacturer for every condition and every patient.”

                                                                                                     Every single drug! (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

This did not go over well with Cuban. If CVS Caremark is so transparent, he mused, why wouldn’t they publicize those drug prices? That’s what his company does, he said.

“All anyone has to do is go to costplusdrugs.com and look at our pricing and then go to their websites and do the same,” Cuban said. “Then they can make their own decisions.”

Asked whether CVS Caremark might consider that, a spokesman declined to answer, by which I mean he pretended to answer by emailing a word-salad statement that only tangentially related to the question.

“The point [Joyner] is making is one we’ve talked to you and many others about: PBMs are the only enduring protection from high prescription drug prices for seniors, the disabled, and working families,” he wrote. “Prior to the advent of PBMs, consumers were at the mercy of drug companies’ high list prices. Many patients could not afford their medicines and otherwise manageable conditions took a heavy toll. We remain confident in our model and our ability to deliver sustainable savings to our clients and their members without sacrificing access or quality.”

Thanks, that … wasn’t at all what I asked. (Illustration by studiostoks/Adobe Stock)

Things got similarly confusing during budget negotiations in Kansas, where a House lawmaker pulled some strings to send $500,000 in state funding to two homeowners whose property values plummeted after oil leached into local supplies of drinking water. Meanwhile, a proposal to test groundwater supplies serving 1,700 homes went unfunded, per the Kansas Reflector.

“I understand that many of us aren’t mathematicians, but I don’t think we have to be to understand there’s a little something wrong with that,” said state Rep. Ford Carr, a Wichita Democrat. “I do appreciate that the state of Kansas has now set a floor for home values with groundwater contamination. Two homes in Butler County are being condemned and reimbursed at $250,000 apiece.”

It was one of dozens of absurd appropriations in the $25 billion spending proposal, which also allocated money for a student-trainer aircraft at Kansas State University ($1.2 million); the Kansas National Guard marksmanship competition teams ($50,000) and renovations at the Wareham Opera House ($1 million). Another provision included $2.5 million for an industrial park, but only in a “city in Kansas” with more than 6,000 but fewer than 6,500 residents, located in a county with more than 18,000 but fewer than 18,500 people. Or, more succinctly, Abilene.

None of those made it past Gov. Laura Kelly, who issued roughly two dozen line-item vetoes before approving the budget. Among the fallen were the homeowner payments, which Kelly said fell “squarely outside the statutory scope” of the state’s abandoned well remediation program. The allocation, she said, “risks setting an untenable financial precedent where the state could be required to pay for the demolition of property in all areas where historic oil contamination exists regardless of source, culprit or disclosure to the home buyer.”

                                                                                    Alumni Gateway at Ohio University in Athens. (Photo by Getty Images)

Money also remains unspent at Ohio University, where $450,000 in scholarship donations remains frozen amid a pending review following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that halted the use of affirmative action in college admissions. The ruling, issued in June, didn’t mention scholarships — but state Attorney General Dave Yost did, warning universities in a letter that he would not offer legal protection to anyone using race as a factor. In anything. At all, per the Capital Journal.

“Race-based scholarships discriminate on the basis of race in awarding benefits,” a spokesperson said in February. “Therefore, it would follow that such programs are unconstitutional.”

Among the frozen funds is $46,000 for 12 race-based scholarships at Ohio University’s journalism school, which would normally have been awarded at a banquet this week. Clearly, that won’t be happening, said Eddith Dashiell, the school’s director.

“I’m disappointed that the university chose this route,” Dashiell said. “It would have been a clear, very easy way to demonstrate their true commitment to diversity and by cowardly cowering to one person’s opinion about how to interpret the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision has resulted in at least 12 of our students not getting scholarships they need.”

A university spokesman confirmed that the review is ongoing but declined to provide details, saying it would be “premature” to “speculate on any potential outcomes.”

But even that brief characterization is misleading, Dashiell said.

“To me, when the university says their official position is the scholarships are still under review, that is code for they haven’t been given out,” she said. “Scholarship season is over … the decision has already been made.”