Rightway announced Tuesday that it has teamed with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs to become the first pharmacy benefit manager to join the company’s network. 

As part of the integration, Rightway’s PBM will grant members direct access to all medications available through the billionaire’s company.

Cost Plus Drugs’ business model previously avoided engaging with PBMs, instead buying drugs directly from manufacturers and selling them online at cost with a fixed 15% markup as well as shipping and fees.

Through his investment in the company, Cuban has sought to create a ‘parallel supply chain’ for pharmaceuticals in order to rein in increasingly high costs for medication. PBMs have long been considered the ‘middlemen’ of healthcare, drawing the ire from both sides of the aisle as a contributor to the rising cost of medication in America. 

The Rightway press release also alluded to the concentrated nature of PBMs, referring to them as an “oligopoly.” According to a HIRC report released earlier this year, three major players, (CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx), control 80% of the total PBM market share by total adjusted claims recorded in 2021.

Additionally, the announcement came one day after Cuban told Forbes in a cover story that he is willing to pull back from other projects to focus on Cost Plus Drugs. He called his work in the pharmaceutical space “legacy defining” and added, “If we get this right, this will be the most impactful thing I’ve ever done.”

Cost Plus Drugs CEO Alex Oshmyansky, MD, PhD, said this move is yet another effort by the company to remedy the affordability crisis facing healthcare consumers. 

“I founded the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company to help solve this problem and provide a way for patients to receive their medication at an affordable price,” Oshmyansky said in a statement. “We already offer transparent, low prices to cash-pay consumers and are excited to now be working with Rightway to further reduce the cost to patients, and to keep the patient record complete from both a clinical and financial perspective.”