Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D-TX) speaks at a campaign rally on March 2, 2026 in Houston, Texas. Talarico is visiting various locations around the state in the lead up to tomorrow’s primaries.
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Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is out with a new plan, first shared with CNBC, to break up what he says are healthcare monopolies and bring down the cost of prescription drugs. And he’s teaming up with entrepreneur Mark Cuban to launch it.
Talarico, a member of the Texas House of Representatives who is running against state Attorney General Ken Paxton in one of the most closely-watched Senate races of the 2026 election cycle, will appear with Cuban for a live event and podcast recording in Fort Worth on Saturday to discuss the plan.
“Mark and I agree it’s time to break up the Big Medicine monopolies that control our broken healthcare system,” Talarico said in a statement to CNBC. “Healthcare corporations are ripping us off — jacking up premiums and profiting off our pain. This plan will break up monopolies, lower medical debt, bring down the cost of prescription drugs, and ensure doctors decide what medication their patients need — not insurance companies.”
Talarico is trying to become the first Democrat elected statewide in Texas since 1994, in a seat that would be key for the party if they want to win control of the Senate from Republicans. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates the race a “toss-up,” and recent polling shows Talarico and Paxton neck-and-neck.
Democrats across the country have hammered home a cost-of-living message heading into the November election, criticizing President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled House and Senate for enacting policies they say have hurt the economy and raised prices.
Talarico is taking the same approach on healthcare, arguing that consolidation is causing the cost of health insurance and care to rise; small, physician-owned practices to be bought out by larger hospital groups; and revenue for large insurance companies to skyrocket.
He cited recent reports that found 90% of all hospital beds are controlled by large hospital systems and just three pharmacy benefit managers — CVS Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group‘s Optum RX — process roughly 80% of prescriptions nationwide.
Representatives for Express Scripts and Optum RX did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
David Whitrap, vice president of communications at CVS Health said in a statement that “CVS Caremark is proud of the work we do to fight back against pharma price gouging and to make prescription drugs more affordable for American employers, unions, and consumers.”
He said any policies should “be assessed through a data-driven analysis about whether they would ultimately raise or lower costs for the American public. Many proposed ‘PBM reforms’ are simply a handout to Big Pharma, and they ultimately would increase US drug costs.”
In an announcement of the plan, Talarico voiced his support for antitrust legislation that he said would take aim at vertically integrated health-care conglomerates, like PBMs, insurance companies and hospital networks.
It would bar PBMs from hiding pricing data, create incentives to develop and approve generic drugs and institute caps on out-of-pocket costs, according to the announcement.
A representative from the American Hospital Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Greg Lopes, a spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, the trade group representing PBMs, said in a statement that “PBMs are the only part of the drug supply chain lowering prescription drug costs.” He argued there is no evidence that vertically-integrated plans lead to higher costs.
“One of the things American patients and families most dislike about our health care system is how fragmented and complex it is, and this legislation would only make that problem far worse — sending patients into a deeper maze of discontinuous care,” Lopes said.
“Health plans operate in highly competitive markets and are the only part of the healthcare system with a clear incentive to keep coverage and care as affordable as possible,” Chris Bond, a spokesperson for AHIP, the trade group representing health insurance providers, said in a statement. “Commonsense policy solutions are needed to rein in hospital systems and brand drugmakers’ anti-competitive practices and ever-higher prices which are the root causes of the affordability crisis.”
Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur who in 2022 founded the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, which is focused on lowering the consumer cost of generic prescription drugs by cutting out PBMs and negotiating directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers, has spoken favorably of Talarico.
Mark Cuban, co-founder of Cost Plus Drugs, arrives for a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In an Aug. 21 appearance on the “Pivot” podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, Cuban called Talarico “honest” and said he would “do the right thing instead of the politically expedient thing.”
In a statement, Cuban said Talarico’s healthcare plan would “break up healthcare monopolies and lower the price of medicine.”
“I’ve spent a long time working to reduce the cost of healthcare for everybody – politicians in Washington have not. Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, or an independent – you want more affordable, better quality healthcare. The plan James has put together will accomplish exactly that, which is why I am supporting it,” Cuban continued.
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.