Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦

Real Estate, International Payments, FX, Fintech, Entrepreneur, Skier, Traveler, Cook, Longhorn! Be honest and kind.

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@ReformedWriter @el_kub Loser and hater.

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@BON_SBNation Still, I’m loving that defense, and if we’ll stop making mistakes we will take control of this game.

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@BON_SBNation Simons embarrassed the whole Longhorn nation. Classless.

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@UTAustin Colin Simon’s is an embarrassment. Longhorns should not act like that, especially on national TV!

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Share this with your governor. Share this with every politician you know. It will cut the healthcare costs in your state.

We started Cost Plus Drugs because the prescription drug market is too complicated, too opaque and too expensive.
Our model is simple: we show what we pay for a drug, add a transparent markup and pharmacy fee, and show the customer the price.
No games. No hidden spread.
And a large percentage of our customers already have insurance.
They come to us because our cash price is often lower than what their insurance plan asks them to pay.
That tells you something is wrong.
Here are five things Texas can do about it.
1. Let patients shop for cheaper drugs
If someone's insurance says a prescription costs $500, but they can buy the exact same drug for $100 cash, let them buy it for $100.
Then credit that $100 toward their deductible and out-of-pocket maximum wherever Texas has authority to do so.
Patients should be rewarded for saving themselves and their health plan money.
They shouldn't be punished for it.
That's how you create something healthcare desperately needs:
Price competition.
2. Standardize PBM and TPA contracts
Texas should require the state, cities, counties and school districts to use standardized model contracts and mandatory terms for PBMs and TPAs.
I've reviewed these contracts.
They routinely run hundreds of pages.
I've seen contracting packages longer than a thousand pages.
There is no human being—or group of human beings—on this planet who can stay awake and understand every provision in contracts that complicated.
I don't care how much coffee they drink.
I call it contractual terrorism.
The vendor only has to sneak a couple of tricks through hundreds of pages.
The employer has to find every one.
It can't.
I've developed a model PBM contract designed to eliminate the major tricks and hidden economics we've identified.
Texas can have it for free.
Use mine. Improve it. Open source it.
I don't care.
Just stop making every government entity negotiate these contracts from scratch.
3. Make the economics public
If taxpayers are paying the bill, taxpayers should know the price.
Pricing. Fees. Rebates. Guarantees. Pharmacy reimbursement. Affiliate compensation. Audit rights.
Make them public.
I'm not talking about patient information or legitimate security information.
I'm talking about the money.
You cannot have an efficient market without price discovery.
Without price discovery, you get information asymmetry.
And when one side knows dramatically more than the other, guess who wins?
Not taxpayers.
Not employers.
Not patients.
Open the contracts up and let competitors see what they have to beat.
That giant sucking sound you hear will be money moving away from healthcare conglomerates that are too big to care and back toward taxpayers, employers and patients.
In the immortal words of Charles Barkley:
I guarantee it.
4. Kill the gag clauses
PBM contracts are like Fight Club.
The number one rule of Fight Club is that you can't talk about Fight Club.
The number one rule of many PBM contracts seems to be that you can't talk about your PBM contract.
That's insane.
Let employers compare pricing, rebates, fees, guarantees and reimbursement terms.
Markets work better when buyers know what other buyers are paying.
5. Make enforcement hurt
If a healthcare company commits a serious violation, give them one mulligan.
But after a second material federal or Texas enforcement action within a defined period, make them ineligible for new Texas government contracts for a period of time.
Two strikes.
You're out.
Today, some of these companies can make billions, get caught, pay a fine and write it off more easily than I wrote off an NBA fine.
That's not deterrence.
That's a cost of doing business.
And Texas should spend more on enforcement.
If Texas spends $10 million auditing contracts and analyzing claims and prevents $100 million in unnecessary spending, that's not overhead.
That's a 10x return on investment

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@ColoSenGOP We are discussing Colorado politics here, not Trump. I respect your right to vote how you want, but if Victor Marx is the best you can do, then CO will stay blue.

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@ColoSenGOP As a pro-business independent, I would happily support a moderate republican in CO, but they cannot win your primary due to the far right MAGA crazies. As others have said on here, put up better candidates!

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

I can’t believe that I’m more aligned with Log Cabin Republicans than The Advocate. This fixation on men in women sports and child mutilation has completely lost me. Trans women and men are different and equal to biological men and women works for me. https://t.co/jNl8ovspuG

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Tell me where Claude and I got this wrong

The U.S. doesn't have a drug problem—it has a $360B+ middleman rebate problem.

List prices are inflated just to fund PBM spreads, fees, and retrospective rebates.

A blueprint to fix it: An Open Federal Formulary + Transparent Cost-Plus

Pricing 🧵👇

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Ro, I like you. You know that. But you need to read the state of the state.

The number of Deca Unicorns in Cali is growing by the day as investors chase amazing startups.

A unique feature of these 10b startups is that even if they raise a billion, little, if any of that money goes to the founders, who are now worth billions of dollars over night. They are the definition of cash poor, stock rich

How are you going to tax them ? Make them borrow money against their shares, if they can? They just raised money to grow their company and a bank will come along and loan them money ? A company that has been in business maybe less than a year ? lol

Will you take their stock if they can’t ?

Do you really think each of multiple founders, who started an amazing company in Cali and is now a billionaire, can each just pull out $250m per billion of net worth from their raise ? You know they can’t.

If this passes , and it doesn’t directly impact me at all, I won’t be a cali resident, but you can bet if I’m investing in a multi billion dollar startup, I’m asking them to move from California first.

IMO, if this passes, only idiot startup founders stay in Cali.

I’ve done it before and will do it again. Dallas. Pittsburgh. Indiana. I will make NOT being in California a pre requisite for an investment

Ideology is not a strategy Ro.

[Fareed Zakaria @FareedZakaria]

Democrats are facing a dilemma: The left has the passion, but the middle still has the votes the party needs to win in general elections.

To win, Democrats don’t need to move left on economics. They need to move to the center on cultural issues.

My take:

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@utsystem @UTaustinftbll Do you know where I can find a high quality UT flag? The only ones that I can find are the low quality single side appliqué/screen printed ones that fade after one year.

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) national co-chair Megan Romer went on Fox News and outlined the DSA’s platform, including:

• Eliminating the Senate
• Replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court as we know them
• Defunding the Pentagon
• Abolishing borders and prisons
• Government ownership of large corporations

These ideas are absolutely insane. If Democrats embrace the DSA, they can kiss winning elections goodbye.

[Kyle Clark @KyleClark]

Colorado Gov Jared Polis (D) is getting attention from the Right for his recent criticism of Democratic Socialists.

“Socialism is a failed economic theory,” Polis told FOX’s Sean Hannity tonight. “I think it’s important to talk about the dangers of socialism.”

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

The interviews of the forest service in the episode expressed extreme concern about cutting of staff and how those cuts could increase fire dangers. Are our current fires in Colorado related to the cuts by the Trump administration to the forest service?

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@KyleClark I just finished watching a CPBS Colorado Experiences episode on the Colorado Trail from 2023. The trail is 500 miles from Denver to Durango through the mountains. It’s maintained only by volunteers.

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@votepalpac @MelatKirosCO You have just turned this independent, me, into a Republican. Your whole platform is about this supposed genocide in Gaza, when in fact, Hamas killed more than 1000 Israelis to start the latest conflict. Hamas unabashedly says that they are not stopping until they destroy Israel

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

Good analysis of an AI startup’s use case for online retailers, called Ambrosia. https://t.co/HEIWKRpcMb

[Michael King 🥊 ⛷️ 🇺🇦 @MKingXBorder]

@DemocraticWins I find it incredible that our military has lost a $50mm helicopter to a $20k drone. Get your shit together and strap on a Gatling gun with the right radar to kill these fuckers. If that won’t work, stop spending $50mm on a weapons platform that is outdated.

[Tyler Glasscock @TylerGlasscock_]

Jared McCain literally did none of this in Philadelphia or at Duke. This is Thunder culture. This is being taught.