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Network Health, the insurance arm of Wisconsin-based Froedtert ThedaCare Health, is expanding its partnership with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. to include employer-sponsored health plan members, broadening the Network Health Cost Plus Drugs arrangement beyond its original Medicare Advantage scope.
How the Network Health Cost Plus Drugs Partnership Began
In early 2025, Network Health became one of the first insurers in the country to integrate Cost Plus Drugs into its Medicare Advantage pharmacy network. On Aug. 3, the company said all members enrolled in its employer-based plans are also now in-network with the pharmacy and can use their drug benefits directly at checkout on the Cost Plus platform and have medications delivered to their homes.
The Technical Infrastructure Behind This Expansion
Network Health built a fully electronic claims integration with its pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts, when it launched the MA arrangement. That integration processes prescriptions in real time with no paper claims, and purchases count toward members’ benefit accumulators. Extending this same electronic infrastructure to employer-sponsored plan members allows Network Health to scale the arrangement without building an entirely separate claims process for its commercial book of business.
How Network Health Cost Plus Drugs Fits a Broader Industry Trend
Harrisburg, Pa.-based Capital Blue Cross became the first insurer in the country to partner with Cost Plus in 2023 and has since expanded the arrangement to include biosimilars for its commercial members. In April, Humana’s CenterWell Pharmacy unit announced it would integrate Cost Plus’ SwiftyRx digital platform to develop new employer-sponsored prescription solutions.
A Pattern of Insurers Following Capital Blue Cross’s Lead
Network Health’s expansion follows a similar trajectory to Capital Blue Cross’s own Cost Plus partnership, which began with a narrower scope before growing to include additional drug categories like biosimilars, suggesting insurers partnering with Cost Plus may commonly start with a specific line of business before broadening the arrangement over time as the underlying claims integration proves successful.
Why Insurers Are Increasingly Partnering With Cost Plus Drugs
Cost Plus Drugs has built its business model around transparent, markup-limited pharmaceutical pricing, an approach that has attracted a growing list of insurer partners seeking to offer members a lower-cost, more predictable pharmacy option. With Network Health, Capital Blue Cross, and Humana’s CenterWell unit all now maintaining active Cost Plus partnerships, this model appears to be gaining traction as a mainstream complement to traditional pharmacy benefit management rather than a niche alternative.
What This Means for Members’ Pharmacy Choices
For Network Health’s employer-sponsored plan members, this expansion provides direct access to Cost Plus’s transparent pricing model through the same seamless, real-time claims processing previously available only to the insurer’s Medicare Advantage enrollees, potentially broadening cost savings to a larger share of the insurer’s overall membership base.
What This Network Health Cost Plus Drugs Expansion Means Going Forward
With Network Health now extending its Cost Plus integration across both Medicare Advantage and employer-sponsored plans, the insurer has established a scalable claims infrastructure that could support further expansion to additional plan types or drug categories in the future, following the pattern Capital Blue Cross has already demonstrated with its own biosimilar expansion.
What to Watch Going Forward
As more insurers follow Network Health, Capital Blue Cross, and Humana’s lead in partnering with Cost Plus Drugs, industry observers will likely watch whether this model continues expanding into additional plan types, drug categories, and insurer partnerships nationwide. Given the real-time electronic claims integration Network Health has already built with Express Scripts, other insurers evaluating similar partnerships may look to this Network Health Cost Plus Drugs arrangement as a practical template for integrating transparent-pricing pharmacy platforms into their existing pharmacy benefit management infrastructure.
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