Mark Cuban, JP Morgan, and the Healthcare Puzzle: Building a System That Works
As the health care industry gathers in San Francisco for the J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference, conversations will inevitably center around billion-dollar deals, moonshot innovations, and transformative ideas. But amidst the buzz, it’s critical to focus on what truly drives meaningful change: transparent, cost-effective, patient-centered care enabled by smartly implemented technology.
Two events that occurred last week tie into the themes of JPM: a blog post, “A Few Words on Healthcare” by Mark Cuban, and my keynote presentation on sustainable VBC MSK at the InnovatorMD Global Summit. Piecing together the key tenants of these episodes offers a roadmap for creating a truly evolved health care system.
Part One: Mark Cuban’s Post - Promises and Challenges
As a fellow stream-of-consciousness writer, I appreciated Cuban’s willingness to share thoughts on health care beyond Cost Plus Drugs and PBMs. His blog post raises important questions about our system’s complexity, opacity, and inefficiency.
Key Themes from Cuban’s Post
Realistic Pricing:
Cuban emphasizes understanding consumable and direct costs to make cash prices reasonable. While this is critical, the system is bloated by indirect costs—administrative overhead, EMR maintenance, middlemen GPOs, and the relentless pursuit of sprawling health campuses. Quantifying these costs is harder but equally essential. Cuban calls this the “CapEx Arms Race,” and he’s not wrong.
Equity and Access:
How do we align prices with reality while ensuring care for those who can’t pay? Possibilities include expanded HSAs, catastrophic insurance, and a return to Traditional Medicare. Cuban proposes shifting margins from ownership to care providers—a vision I wholeheartedly support.
Transparency Without a Race to the Bottom:
Transparency efforts have been slow because providers fear commoditization and brand damage. Rewarding quality remains an aspirational goal, but we still lack sophisticated mechanisms for risk adjustment, complete data, and direct comparisons.
Overcoming Incumbency:
True change requires credible threats to the status quo, like direct contracting, narrow networks, and employer-led initiatives seeking high-value care (not just the cheapest).
Cuban’s post is a welcome conversation starter, but actionable solutions require empowering health care providers, aligning incentives, and creating business models that allow physicians to not just survive but thrive. (On that note, it’s exciting to see Mark Cuban Companies (MCC) partner with Mishe Health—a Dem Dry Bones portco—to enable this vision!)
Part Two: Key Takeaways from My Global Summit Keynote
At the InnovatorMD Global Summit, I presented a framework for sustainable MSK care that addresses the inefficiencies in specialty care leading to low-value treatments.
Core Principles
Condition-Specific Bundles:
MSK VBC has traditionally focused on surgical episodes of care. Expanding payments to encompass the full care journey—diagnosis, treatment, recovery—provides transparency, aligns incentives, and improves outcomes. Current models like CJR and BPCI miss opportunities in non-surgical management and longitudinal care.
Technology as an Enabler:
Artificial intelligence (AI), remote monitoring, and data analytics extend care delivery beyond the clinic. These tools streamline care while personalizing interventions, matching the right patient to the highest-value solution. As AI evolves, it will bridge the gaps in predictive modeling, reduce biases, and improve decision-making.
Whole-Person Care:
Integrating health optimization (e.g., smoking cessation, weight management) with evidence-based interventions reduces low-value care and improves outcomes. Specialty care, particularly in MSK, offers a Trojan horse for whole-person care. Addressing the interplay between physical and mental health can yield significant improvements in cost and quality.
These principles not only solve the “VBC vaporware” problem but also offer a scalable framework for multi-specialty expansion. Later, I’ll connect these ideas with Cuban’s post and JPM themes to complete the puzzle.
[Editor’s Note: Slides from my presentation linked below.]
Part Three: JP Morgan 2025—Hot Topics and Key Questions
This year’s J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference will highlight trends like AI innovation, digital health, specialty care models, and regulatory hurdles.
Key Themes
AI and Health care Technology:
AI has replaced “legacy” digital health as the darling of investors. While many focus on back-office automation, its true potential lies in personalization. AI could revolutionize VBC by enabling tailored care decisions based on population and individual data. However, investors must avoid repeating past mistakes by seeking scalability without sacrificing substance.
Specialty Care Models
As primary care investment yields underwhelming results, focus will shift to specialty care. Specialty care offers a sweet spot: improving access and outcomes, creating sustainable business models, and saving the system money. With its favorable economics and highly variable quality, specialty care holds immense potential for innovation.
Regulatory Scrutiny:
Corporate involvement in health care faces increasing scrutiny. States are introducing laws to tighten oversight, and arrangements like value-based enterprises (VBEs) offer a pathway for compliant, physician-led innovation. These vehicles ensure compliance with regulations like AKS and Stark while enabling sustainable growth.
This year’s JPM comes at a pivotal moment, with ample dry powder waiting to be invested and a potential pivot to a more corporation-friendly federal administration. The question remains: will this year’s discussions forge a bold new path or repeat the mistakes of the past?
(Unfortunately, I won’t be at JPM this year, but I aim to attend it the next time it’s on the East Coast.)
Part Four: The Three Tenants - Pieces of the Puzzle
Cuban’s ideas, my Global Summit insights, and JPM themes converge to create a clear vision for the future of health care. Here are the three puzzle pieces:
Simplicity and Access:
Transparent pricing and aligned incentives simplify care while ensuring equity.Sustainable VBC:
Precision-focused, whole-person care delivers better outcomes and expands the scope of VBC.Grounded Innovation:
Purposeful, patient-centered innovation balances personalization, compliance, and scalability.
Part Five: Putting The Pieces Together
Distilled to their guiding principles, the three tenants combine to create a path forward. Our puzzle pieces—simplicity and access, sustainable value-based care, and grounded innovation—fit together to form a vision for a better system.
This vision is not theoretical — it’s being built right now.
Commons Clinic embodies this vision, addressing critical challenges with a transparent, scalable model that aligns with both patient needs and investor priorities. With its recent announcement, Commons is poised to expand its proven approach and lay the groundwork for a multi-specialty future.
As the curtain rises on JPM, let’s move beyond splashy tech and theoretical TAMs to create systems that simplify care, empower providers, and deliver measurable value. The model detailed here offers a blueprint — not for disruption alone, but for transformation.
Our thoughts are also with those in Southern California affected by the wildfires, including the doctors, staff, and patients at Commons Clinic. Stay safe.
Appendix: InnovatorMD Slides
Ben Schwartz, MD, MBA
Editor-in-Chief, The Surgeon’s Record
Commons Clinic Senior Clinical Fellow
