Humana’s CenterWell Pharmacy business and Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs have tied the knot on a partnership focused on creating new “end-to-end employer prescription solutions.”
The arrangement, announced Monday, sees CenterWell Pharmacy dubbed an official pharmacy partner of Cost Plus Drugs. The Humana business will be adopting Cost Plus Drugs’ software platform, SwiftyRx, to handle medication order intake.
The tool’s capabilities—combined with CenterWell Pharmacy’s distribution infrastructure and Cost Plus Drugs’ pass-through drug pricing—will fuel various operational efficiencies via easier patient onboarding, automated benefit checks and reduced costs to fill prescriptions, they said.
“Everyone should be able to get safe, affordable medication,” celebrity entrepreneur and Cost Plus Drugs co-founder Mark Cuban said in the announcement. “This collaboration gives Cost Plus Drugs the chance to support more consumers. We’re working with CenterWell Pharmacy because we trust the team and like what they’re doing in trying to improve prescription affordability.”
Cuban and Humana CEO Jim Rechtin had teased their discussions surrounding such a partnership back in December. At the time, Cuban said that widespread adoption of direct-to-employer programs that challenge traditional pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) models could save members “billions and billions of dollars across consumers.” That mindset of removing complexity from members’ access to medications was at the forefront of Humana's mind when it built CenterWell Pharmacy to begin with, Rechtin.
CenterWell is a health services division within Humana that brought in $22.5 billion in revenue during 2025 between its pharmacy, primary care and home offerings, with CenterWell Pharmacy alone recording nearly $13 billion (up from 2024’s $11.6 billion).
That said, the unit’s operating costs also increased year over year due in large part to greater volume within its specialty pharmacy, the company wrote in its most recent earnings filing. Earlier this year, CenterWell Pharmacy announced it would begin dispensing Eli Lilly’s obesity drugs, a major cost driver, within employer weight management programs.
Alongside the push to capture new employer customers, Humana is looking at the deal as a way to improve its own benefits offerings. Per the announcement, company employees enrolled in its Humana Associate Benefit Plan will also gain home delivery pharmacy services via the SwiftyRx platform.
“Today’s announcements reflect an aligned mission to redesign access and affordability in a simplified approach, to help patients get the medications they need,” Bethanie Stein, president of pharmacy at Humana, said in the announcement. “CenterWell’s value as a distribution partner lies in our capacity, infrastructure, and proven quality measures, all of which drive a better experience for our patients. That’s important as we focus on greater medication adherence and patient health outcomes across the country.”
Humana will be releasing and commenting on the numbers for the most recent quarter later this week.
Cost Plus Drugs was launched in 2022 to bypass middlemen and lower drug costs. It carries 2,300 medications—largely generics— that are sold to consumers and others at acquisition cost plus a 15% fee to cover the business’ expenses and return a modest profit.
The company’s website currently outlines an employer-sponsored benefit for potential employer customers, in which a payer would either work with an existing pharmacy benefit manager to gain access to their pharmacy network or serve as a standalone “bolt-on” pharmacy benefit.