In a high-stakes power play coming from within the White House, billionaire, Joe Biden advocate Mark Cuban, was chosen to take a central role in a major healthcare event held Monday. This move provokes increasing tension and clouds bipartisan interests, given Cuban’s overt defense of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives — a point of deep contention among conservative circles.
Cuban, luminary entrepreneur and owner of a pharmaceutical firm committed to making medicines more accessible and affordable, lent his voice to a roundtable discussion about Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). A hot button topic on Biden’s agenda, PBMs are frequently described as “prescription drug middlemen,” and stoking demand for greater transparency in pharmacy operations is considered a key step towards reducing overall drug costs.
Despite the mainstream bipartisan effort in Washington D.C. to impose fresh restrictions on PBMs, the inclusion of Mark Cuban — who publicly announced his support for Biden against ex-President Donald Trump for re-election on Monday — threatens to escalate the issue into an embroiled partisan contest.
Recently, Cuban’s support for DEI initiatives has incited significant tumult in the political milieu. Critics, particularly conservatives, brandish these initiatives as discriminatory. The dividing lines solidified in January when, as The Daily Wire reported, Cuban and Elon Musk ignited a virtual clash over DEI practices, specifically race-based hiring. Musk condemned DEI as “just another word for racism,” while Cuban argued in favour of DEI, asserting that they boost business performance and benefit employees.
Cuban, once perceived as a political centrist, attracted another wave of backlash after he posted further comments concerning DEI. Andrea Lucas, a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) commissioner, countered Cuban’s stance, reminding audiences of federal laws prohibiting discrimination against job applicants or employees based on sex, race, religion, and more.
Such declarations from Cuban, especially those pertaining to DEI, have sown discomfort among Republican lawmakers. The Daily Wire in conversation with a few GOP Senate personnel, unearthed disgust towards any initiative involving Cuban, potentially undermining the PBM reforms posed by the Biden administration and Congress. Cuban’s perceived shift from a hard work champion to a “creature of the Left” has evidently detracted from his previous informal standing as “neutral”.
One notable GOP staff member was forthright, “I can’t stand Mark Cuban. I saw the White House is trotting him out … He’s the worst possible spokesperson for them”. Another followed suit, expressing solidarity for PBMs as a matter of positioning themselves contrary to Cuban. Such sentiment merely underscores the potential for Cuban’s participation to exacerbate the divide across party lines.
Voters also found Cuban’s allegiance solidified during the Texas GOP primary, when we witnessed his “protest vote against” Trump by voting for primary opponent Nikki Haley. His steadfast allegiance to Biden, even if Biden were “literally on his deathbed,” was verbalized to Bloomberg News.
In conclusion, Cuban’s active participation in the healthcare event and his unabashed support for DEI are rapidly antagonizing conservative lawmakers. His progressive positions, coupled with the abrasive tone of his public statements, seem unlikely to facilitate bipartisan cooperation on PBM reform. Rather, they appear poised to incite partisan conflict and undermine cross-party efforts toward a more equitable and affordable pharmaceutical landscape. As the face of the reforms, Cuban’s contentious reputation and controversial positions may, instead, stall progress on these vital issues.
