# Mark Cuban Says Healthcare Costs, Not AI, Are the Real Job Killer > Mark Cuban argues the layoffs everyone is blaming on artificial intelligence have a bigger, quieter cause: what it now costs an employer just to keep a worker insured. - Source: Morning Week - Canonical URL: https://morningweek.com/article/mark-cuban-says-healthcare-costs-not-ai-are-the-real-job-killer - Author: Morning Week Newsroom - Section: Finance & Economics - Published: 2026-10-08T21:39:45.683Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T21:39:45.683Z - Tags: Mark Cuban, healthcare costs, jobs, AI and work, Break Up Big Medicine Act, employer benefits --- Mark Cuban thinks the country is aiming its job loss anxiety at the wrong target. It's far easier to blame AI than it is to blame healthcare costs, the billionaire entrepreneur has argued, insisting that for the foreseeable future, the cost of healthcare benefits will get more people fired, or not hired, than AI. ## The number nobody wants to say out loud Cuban points to a burden he calls insane: roughly 27,000 to 30,000 dollars per family per year in premiums and care that employers are now absorbing. The numbers behind that complaint are striking on their own. National healthcare spending reached 5.3 trillion dollars in 2024, about 18 percent of GDP, double the 2.5 trillion dollars spent in 2000. Per person spending in the United States runs to 14,775 dollars, nearly double the 7,860 dollar average across other high income countries. ## The research behind the claim A Yale study found that every 1 percent increase in healthcare prices corresponds to roughly a 0.4 percent decrease in payroll and headcount at employers outside the health sector itself, a direct statistical link between rising healthcare costs and job losses. Mercer projects an 8.2 percent increase in healthcare cost per employee for 2027, and nearly half of large employers already say they plan to change their medical plans that year in response. ## A different kind of layoff data AI has been cited as the reason in 21 percent of layoff announcements so far this year, and McKinsey has estimated roughly 11 million workers may need new jobs because of AI driven disruption. Cuban is not arguing AI has zero effect on employment. His point is that the healthcare cost burden is the larger, quieter driver getting far less political and media attention by comparison. ## A bill with support from both parties Cuban has thrown his weight behind the Break Up Big Medicine Act, introduced February 10 by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. The bipartisan bill would make it illegal for a single company to simultaneously own a medical provider alongside an insurer, a pharmacy benefit manager or a drug and device wholesaler, aiming to unwind the vertically integrated conglomerates Cuban argues are driving costs higher. He has called the bill a no brainer for lower costs. Cuban's own business reflects the same diagnosis. His company Cost Plus Drugs is built around cutting prescription prices by eliminating pharmacy benefit managers from the pricing chain entirely, the same middlemen the Senate bill targets. A layoff blamed on a chatbot makes a cleaner headline than one blamed on an insurance renewal, even when the renewal is what actually broke the budget. Whichever factor ultimately carries more blame, Cuban's argument reframes a debate that has mostly centered on AI and automation, pointing instead at a cost structure that has been quietly compounding for decades and, by his reading, is already doing more damage to the job market than the technology currently getting all the attention. --- Originally published by Morning Week. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://morningweek.com/article/mark-cuban-says-healthcare-costs-not-ai-are-the-real-job-killer.