Mark Cuban Is Building the Employer Healthcare Play That DPC Started Ten Years Ago

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#Mark Cuban#employer DPC#Cost Plus Wellness#employer benefits#direct care#DPC Summit#health benefits
Sources: Will Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Wellness Appeal to Employers? · Big News For The DPC Summit · CenterWell Pharmacy and Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company Teaming up to Develop Disruptive Medication Model · Hint Health Releases 2026 Direct Primary Care Trends Report

Dr. Shane Purcell has been making the case for DPC employer accounts since before most benefits consultants knew what DPC was. His book is called “Magic, Pixie Dust, and Miracles.” He helped build the framework that DPC practices use today when pitching self-funded employers. This month, he sat down with Mark Cuban to talk about DPC and employer health benefits. He’ll present that conversation at the DPC Summit in New Orleans this July.

The context for why Cuban wanted that conversation: Cost Plus Wellness, a platform he launched in January that connects self-funded employers directly with providers via published contracts.

What Cost Plus Wellness Does

The model is simple. Providers publish their actual contracts on the platform. Employers read the terms, copy the templates if they want, and pay providers directly. No insurance network markup. No broker fee. Third-party administrators handle claims and must pay within 30 days.

As of May 21, 31 providers had published contracts, all in specialty care: ambulatory surgical centers, single-specialty groups and multi-specialty practices. Cuban’s framing: “We think it should be simple and direct. Not convoluted and opaque, as it is now.”

The platform is currently free for employers. The focus is specialty care for now, with primary care not yet in the picture.

Why This Looks Like DPC

DPC practices have been running direct employer accounts for over a decade. The structure is familiar: employer pays a flat monthly fee per employee, employees get direct access to their primary care physician, no claims process. Hint Health’s 2026 Direct Primary Care Trends Report found that employers now fund 60% of active DPC memberships, the first time employer-sponsored enrollment has crossed that threshold.

Cost Plus Wellness is applying the same logic to specialty and surgical care. A self-funded employer who wanted to build a complete direct-care package would need both pieces: a DPC physician for primary care, and a Cost Plus Wellness provider for specialist and surgical needs. The DPC Summit conversation between Purcell and Cuban is a public signal these two sides are in dialogue.

Cuban has been building toward this for a few years. Cost Plus Drugs launched in 2022 and undercut pharmacy benefit managers on prescription pricing. The partnership with Humana’s CenterWell announced in April extended the Cost Plus model to employer prescription programs at scale. Cost Plus Wellness is the care side of that stack.

The Caveats

Cost Plus Wellness has critics. Ellen Kelsay, CEO of Business Group on Health, told MedCity News the platform has real appeal for self-insured employers focused on pricing but still needs provider quality data and regional coverage to scale. Elizabeth Mitchell, president of Purchaser Business Group on Health, kept it plain: “Price is critical. But there is no price for unsafe care.”

These are fair objections. Thirty-one providers don’t solve the access problem. DPC practices know this from experience: many spent years building employer relationships one contract at a time before platforms created the infrastructure to make those agreements easier to find.

Employer health plan costs are projected to hit roughly $17,000 per employee in 2026, up more than 9% from last year, according to Aon. That pressure is pushing employers to look outside traditional networks when someone makes direct contracting accessible.

What This Means

If you’re a DPC physician working the employer market, Cost Plus Wellness is after different territory: specialty and surgical care, not primary care. For a practice with an active employer account, that’s a potential complement, not a competitive threat.

Whether Cuban eventually moves into primary care is an open question. The DPC Summit conversation with Purcell is a signal he’s at least thinking about where DPC fits in the picture he’s building.

The broader trend is worth watching. Employers are ready to try direct contracting when someone makes it easy enough. Every platform that lowers that friction expands the market for what DPC already does. The DPC Summit in New Orleans this July is where those two sides of the conversation are meeting in public.