And because Friday Nights are for PBM contracts, here is the taxpayer version for Dallas, followed by the Inside Baseball version What Dallas Taxpayers Should Know About the City's Employee Drug Contract with Blue Cross & Prime Taxpayer Version — plain language. Based on the executed contract for active city employees' pharmacy benefits (awarded June 2025). Estimates are good-faith. Technical analysis on file. The short version The sales pitch and the signed contract say opposite things about the same money. The proposal promised Dallas "100% of all rebates" — the payments drug makers send back on brand-name drugs. But buried in the operating exhibit the city actually signed is the reverse: Dallas agreed it has "no right to, or legal interest in, any portion of the rebates" — on drugs and on medical treatments — and accepted a fixed monthly credit instead. The contract's own rules say the exhibit wins. The pitch was decoration. Where the money leaks 1. The rebate switcheroo. Real rebates grow every year as drug prices rise. Dallas's fixed credit doesn't. The gap — everything above the credit, plus fees drug makers pay that were defined out of "rebates" entirely, plus the cut kept by an affiliated middleman company — stays with the Blue Cross/Prime side. Best estimate: $2–6 million a year, growing. 2. The middleman writes its own price list. Generic drug prices come off a list "established by Prime… maintained by Prime and updated from time to time" — the company being paid sets the prices it's paid, with no city approval and no cap. Worth roughly $1–3 million a year versus a city-controlled list. 3. The audit is a toll booth. To audit its own rebate money, Dallas must travel to the middleman's partner office in St. Louis, use an auditor that partner approves, sign their secrecy agreement — and pay a $15,000 fee for the privilege. Once a year, maximum. 4. Leaving costs the guarantees. If the city exits early — even legally — its price guarantees for that period are voided and the monthly credits stop. What it costs you On a plan covering roughly 30,000 people and $40–55 million a year in drugs: plausibly $3–9 million a year versus an honest structure. A transparent competitor bid on this contract and lost to the incumbent's bundle. The fix Strike the waiver — restore "the greater of the guarantees or 100% of everything drug makers pay," in cash, on drugs and medical both. City approval over the price list. Real audits: city-chosen auditor, no fees, no field trips. And here's the leverage: CVS signed every one of these protections with California's state plan in 2026, and Express Scripts signed most of them with Georgia. The fixes aren't wishes — they're signatures other governments already collected. There may also be a legal shortcut: the contract's own fine print arguably makes the city's original bid requirements outrank the waiver. Worth a hard look before paying for anything.(Mark Cuban)