New Jersey's State Health Benefits Program (SHBP) covers approximately 690,000 public employees, retirees, and dependents under a self-funded structure that has been absorbing double-digit rate increases for years without resolving the cost drivers behind them, according to the New Jersey Governor's Office. Governor Mikie Sherrill has added an unusual recruit to the reform effort in Mark Cuban, co-founder of Cost Plus Drugs, who volunteered via social media to join the working group Sherrill created as part of a September deal with 17 state employee unions.
"I'll volunteer to be on the committee that cuts your health benefits cost," Cuban wrote on X, tagging Sherrill's account. "You need someone from the outside that is objective, and can stand up to the big healthcare conglomerates." Sherrill accepted publicly, telling Cuban: "We'd love to have you on Team Jersey as we tackle this challenge. Let's talk - we'll reach out today."
The working group holds its first meeting on October 16.
The system Cuban is joining has been in financial distress for years. For 2026, Aon recommended increases of 21% for state employees, 36.5% for local government plans, and 29.7% for school employee plans, according to NJBiz. Nearly 200 local government employers have exited the SHBP since 2020, leaving behind a sicker, costlier pool of members, a dynamic actuaries describe as anti-selection. The projected cost of the state employee and retiree portion alone is approximately $3.9 billion for 2027.
The September union deal froze worker contribution rates for 2027 but, as reporting from NJ1015 noted, "does not fix the increasingly serious financial problems inside New Jersey's public employee health benefits system." The working group's mandate spans everything from how the program is governed to how its vendors are contracted and paid, a scope that reflects how comprehensively the existing model is being questioned.
Cuban's pitch is not a general cost-cutting argument. It is a specific one about prescription drug pricing opacity. In an extended social media post addressed to Sherrill, he outlined the Cost Plus Drugs model: show what the company pays for a drug, add a transparent markup and pharmacy fee, display the price. "No games. No hidden spread," he wrote, noting that many Cost Plus customers already have insurance but find the cash price lower than their plan's cost.
His argument goes directly to pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) practices, the same structural issue Congress addressed in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026 (CAA 2026), signed February 3. The law requires PBMs serving large self-funded employer plans, public and private, to provide detailed semiannual drug-pricing and rebate reports and to pass through 100% of rebates to the plan. Benefits consultants have described the CAA 2026 as "by far the most sweeping PBM reform in ERISA history", though its practical impact will phase in gradually.
New Jersey lawmakers had already targeted PBM practices in separate state legislation earlier in 2026, according to reporting by The Digest. Cuban's arrival gives that argument a public profile it has not had inside the working group.
The SHBP's structural difficulties run deeper than any single reform element. The local government portion has faced a compounding withdrawal problem for years. As healthier, lower-cost employers exit and join commercial plans, the risk pool deteriorates further for those remaining. That dynamic is not resolved by prescription drug pricing transparency alone, and no timeline has been set for the working group to report its recommendations.
Senator Declan O'Scanlon, a Republican member of Sherrill's health benefits committee and a longtime critic of the program's management, said the governor had no credible alternative. "If we don't take Mark Cuban up on his offer, we're not really serious," O'Scanlon told the New Jersey Globe.
