Mark Cuban Liking Direct Primary Care: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

There has been a lot of chatter on X about Mark Cuban mentioning and even liking DPC. Hell, he even responded to me. A lot of people in the DPC world are getting really excited. I think we need to pump the brakes on this a bit and examine some things.

The Good

I think any attention to DPC being part of the answer to fixing our broken and unaffordable healthcare system is great. Cuban is bringing this attention to us in truckloads. That part of the government putting $100 into an HSA to be only used for DPC is awesome. Thanks, Mark. His attention may be the tipping point to get other family doctors to jump and for patients to jump with them. I am all for that.

The Bad

Cuban’s constant mentioning of DPC as part of the answer also brings with it the attention of the people we don’t want involved. At one point, Cuban even asked if hospitals could be involved in running a network (aka controlling) of DPC practices in some type of nationwide conglomerate. Hell no! We left these administrators for a reason and do not want to go back to them.

Additionally, once the government gets involved (by putting that $100 into Health Savings Accounts), it is likely to impose stipulations. The government can waste money without accountability as long as it wants, but those “crooked” DPC doctors will need quality metrics for that $100.

The Ugly

Some doctors, already “affiliated” with private equity and venture capitalists, are virtually jumping up and down in ecstasy that maybe Cuban will work with them to expand their own network. We are on the slippery slope of diluting DPC with these situations. Remember, VC and PE want 10x of their investments, so the end game is always the same. Their blueprint is to eventually fire MD/DOs, hire midlevels, and shorten visit times. Their excuse will be that they have so many patients now wanting DPC that they had to do this, and they will say MD/DOs are unaffordable if it is to be profitable. But we all know the real reason, and that is that they want more profit.

Circling back to Cuban, this guy is a businessman and tech entrepreneur. Hell, he is a shark on Shark Tank. Which silo do you think he fits in? The one where independent doctors open their own practices on their own terms and are very happy, or the one where VC and PE scale DPC to a diluted piece of crap? My guess is the latter.

Now, as you ponder my question, watch this:

In my humble opinion, Direct Primary Care is the bonita trophy fish that Cuban and other PE/VC/entrepreneurs want to catch. And be very leery of some DPC docs who will sell us out to embrace him. These docs may be cheering the most because they are also fishing for bonita with the Cubes.

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