Mark Cuban has opinions about healthcare, and he's not keeping them quiet. The billionaire entrepreneur thinks the U.S. healthcare system is so tangled up with middlemen and administrative bloat that doctors can barely do what they trained for: help sick people get better.

Healthcare Should Be Simple, But It's Not

Cuban laid out his thinking during an April appearance on the "How I Doctor" podcast, where he reduced healthcare to its essence. "Healthcare is really a simple business," said the co-founder of Cost Plus Drugs, an online pharmacy aimed at transparent pricing. "You go to the doctor, hopefully the doctor says nothing's wrong. If there's a complication or some need, the doctor tells you what you need."

In his view, there should only be two questions after that: How much will it cost, and what's the payment plan? Pretty straightforward stuff.

But that's not how it works in America. Instead, Cuban sees a system designed to extract money at every turn. "Every complication you add is an opportunity for arbitrage," he explained, pointing to the endless layers of complexity that let third parties profit while patients pay more and doctors drown in paperwork.

And the doctors? They're getting squeezed from all sides. "Let me just tell you upfront, doctors are underpaid," Cuban said, especially when you compare what they earn to what hospitals actually bill for major procedures. He thinks heart surgeons should make serious money—like $10,000 per surgery—because they're literally saving lives, not struggling to keep the lights on.

Then came one of his most memorable lines. A healthy healthcare system, Cuban suggested, would give doctors enough breathing room to actually live. "How can we get doctors to be able to golf on Wednesdays like they used to?" he asked. It's both funny and pointed—a callback to a time when being a physician meant financial security and work-life balance, not endless administrative burden.

Insurance Companies Are the Problem

If you're wondering who Cuban blames for this mess, he didn't mince words. "The insurance companies are the worst of the worst of the worst, of the worst of the worst," he said on the podcast.

His beef? Insurers design plans loaded with high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, which means patients often can't afford to pay. But doctors still have to treat them. "Even if they're broke as a joke and don't have two nickels to rub together, you have to still care for them," Cuban said. The financial risk lands on doctors, not insurance companies.

Cuban believes transparent pricing would solve a lot of this. Doctors could focus on treating patients and documenting care, not wrestling with byzantine billing systems and chasing down payments.

Make Medical School Free

Cuban also thinks America should make medical school tuition-free to attract more people into medicine and fix the doctor shortage.

"There are 100k students in med school each year. Room and board is about 100k per year. For [$10B] a year, med school could be free," Cuban posted on Bluesky in July. He's mentioned similar numbers before, suggesting the government could cover tuition for around $2.5 billion annually if it focused just on current enrollment.

It's not charity—Cuban thinks it's an investment that would pay dividends. "You would see a wholesale change in the profession, career paths and the cost of care," he said. More doctors, less debt, better care. In his mind, it's a no-brainer.