By Matt Rooney
Well, Save Jerseyans, it looks like New Jersey’s affordability crisis has officially entered the Shark Tank phase.
Governor Mikie Sherrill announced Monday that she’s taking billionaire entrepreneur and ex-Shark Tank star Mark Cuban up on his offer to help tackle the exploding cost of New Jersey’s public employee health benefits system.
“Thanks for the offer. I appreciate your innovative work in this space as we bring all ideas to the table,” Sherrill told Cuban. “We’d love to have you on Team Jersey as we tackle this challenge.”
Translation: Governor, you have a deal.
Cuban volunteered after Sherrill created yet another Trenton working group to study the State Health Benefits Program, which covers roughly 690,000 people. The state says the group will examine everything from vendor contracting and prescription drug costs to plan design, premiums, governance and transparency.
And, to be fair, Cuban isn’t merely a celebrity cameo. The Cost Plus Drugs co-founder has spent years attacking opaque prescription-drug pricing and pharmacy benefit manager practices. He could very well bring some useful ideas to a state bureaucracy desperately in need of them.
But that’s also what makes this episode so unintentionally hilarious.
Remember Candidate Mikie Sherrill?
Her 2025 “Affordability Agenda” promised that she would put “innovation and common sense to work” to lower health care costs. She promised to stand up to health-care middlemen. She touted her record in Congress. She told voters she knew “the difference between saying and doing.”
Fast-forward nine months into the Sherrill Administration and the State Health Benefits Commission has adopted 2027 increases of 17.3% for active employees, 36.5% for early retirees and 19.3% for Medicare retirees.
Sherrill subsequently struck a deal with 17 public employee unions to shield state workers from higher contribution rates next year while launching the aforementioned working group to figure out how to make the system sustainable.
And now Mark Cuban is riding in from Texas.
You really couldn’t script it better.
New Jersey has a governor, a $60-billion-plus state budget, an enormous bureaucracy, consultants, actuaries, commissioners, authorities, departments, legislative committees, and more highly compensated public officials than the average taxpayer could name with a gun to his head.
Apparently what we were missing was the guy from Shark Tank.
“Hi Sharks. My name is Mikie. I’m from New Jersey. We have 690,000 people in our public health plans, costs are exploding, and today I’m asking for one billionaire to help us figure out what the hell to do.”
Again: Cuban might actually help! State Senator Declan O’Scanlon, a Republican member of Sherrill’s committee and longtime health-benefits reform advocate, argued that refusing Cuban’s assistance would suggest the state wasn’t serious about reform. He’s got a point.
The punchline isn’t really Cuban.
The punchline is Trenton.
For years, New Jersey government has taxed, regulated, borrowed, negotiated, commissioned, and “studied” its way into one affordability crisis after another. When the bill finally arrives, the standard Trenton response is to create another task force populated largely by representatives of the same institutions that helped administer the status quo.
So perhaps an outsider really is exactly what New Jersey needs.
It’s simply worth appreciating the absurdity: Mikie Sherrill ran for governor promising a new era of competence, innovation, and affordability.
Less than a year later?
Mr. Wonderful wasn’t available, so she’s calling Mark Cuban.
Welcome to Governor Shark Tank, Save Jerseyans.
Let’s hope Cuban makes an offer New Jersey taxpayers can afford.
