Families are spending more on health insurance than ever before. Premiums rose 21% nationwide in 2026, and the average family of four now pays about $2,230 a month for health insurance premiums, according to Aflac.
For millions of American households, those monthly payments have become the single largest recurring expense outside of housing and mortgage obligations.
Mark Cuban, the billionaire behind low-cost prescription drug company Cost Plus Drugs, thinks the entire payment model needs a fundamental overhaul.
He recently proposed that families redirect their monthly premium payments into a specialized bank account they control rather than sending them to an insurer.
Cuban pitches a bank account to replace health insurance premiums
The proposal, which Cuban first detailed in a January 2025 blog post and has since expanded on social media and in podcast interviews, centers on a single structural shift.
Instead of paying an insurance company each month, a family would deposit the same amount into a restricted savings account designed exclusively for medical expenses.
“The one debt you can’t ever pay off? Your insurance premiums,” Cuban wrote on X. “You literally will pay an insurance premium monthly, till you die.”
His proposal arrives at a moment when coverage is more expensive and less accessible than it has been in over a decade.
Cuban used the example of a family of five paying roughly $2,100 each month, which is comparable to the cost of an Affordable Care Act Silver plan.
In his framework, that monthly deposit would be split into three categories: roughly $300 toward stop-loss coverage capped at $30,000, $200 toward direct primary care, and the remaining $1,600 deposited into the restricted savings account, according to Cuban’s X posts.
If a family avoids major health events over the years, that savings balance grows, and Cuban says they would keep it all when they reach age 65.
If a medical emergency hits before enough savings have accumulated, the account holder’s bank would advance a loan of up to $30,000 to cover costs, repaid through future monthly deposits.
“This is not insurance,” Cuban wrote in a post outlining the plan. “It’s a specially designed bank account that gives you control, support, a doctor to work with, and catastrophic financial protection.”
How Cuban’s plan fits his broader attack on insurance company overhead
Cuban has spent several years building the case that insurance companies extract far more value from the health care system than they contribute back to patients.
Cost Plus Drugs, which he co-founded in 2022 and in which he’s invested more than $100 million, bypasses pharmacy benefit managers and sells medications at cost plus a transparent 15% markup, small pharmacy labor fee, and shipping charge, Forbes reported.
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In the January blog post, Cuban estimated that 20% to 30% of total health care spending goes toward administering and managing insurance payments, with an additional 10% lost to fraud, overbilling, and upcoding.
Across total annual expenditures of roughly $5 trillion, he argued that eliminating the insurance layer and moving to a transparency-driven, all-cash system could generate approximately $2.5 trillion in savings.
“The greatest trick the insurance companies ever played was putting the PBMs out there to take all the hits and pushing people to ignore everything else that they’re doing,” Cuban told Healthcare Brew in April 2026, referring to pharmacy benefit managers that negotiate drug prices between manufacturers and insurers.
Cuban has labeled the concept “The 10 Plan,” a reference to a proposed cap that would limit health care contributions to no more than 10% of a household’s income. He detailed the structure during an appearance on Semafor’s Compound Interest podcast in late April 2026.
Health insurance premiums have reached historic highs in 2026
Cuban’s proposal lands in the middle of one of the steepest premium increases since the ACA marketplace launched in 2014.
The average monthly cost of an ACA Silver plan for a 40-year-old reached $752 in 2026, climbing from $621 the prior year, according to ValuePenguin’s analysis of marketplace rate filings.
The expiration of enhanced ACA premium subsidies at the end of 2025 triggered much of that surge, leaving millions of enrollees responsible for the full unsubsidized cost of their coverage for the first time since the enhanced subsidies took effect in 2021.
In New Jersey alone, about 14% of marketplace enrollees, 68,830 people, dropped their plans between Jan. 31 and April 15 after premiums jumped, according to the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance.
We’re in a period of uncertainty in every health insurance market right now, which is something we haven’t seen in a very long time.
Employer-sponsored plans have not escaped these pressures, with average annual family premiums reaching $26,993 in 2025, according to the KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey.
That figure now nearly matches the federal poverty line for a family of three, which stood at $26,650 in the same year.
Where Cuban’s insurance alternative faces its biggest challenges
Cuban himself acknowledged that significant regulatory and logistical barriers stand between the concept and any real-world rollout of the model.
The ACA’s individual mandate provisions, state insurance regulations, and federal consumer protection rules were all designed around a system where licensed insurers bear risk, not banks or savings accounts.
There is also the fundamental question of whether the plan would function for Americans who already manage chronic conditions or face consistently high medical costs.
The insurance model, for all its inefficiencies, pools risk across large groups so that the expenses of the sickest members are shared by healthier enrollees who use less care.
Cuban’s proposal would shift much of that risk back onto individuals, which could benefit younger and healthier workers while leaving older or chronically ill participants with fewer options.
Whether the $30,000 stop-loss threshold and the lending mechanism would be sufficient to protect families facing six-figure hospital bills remains an open question that Cuban acknowledges needs further work.
Related: Mark Cuban goes in hard on the American healthcare system
