Amazon wants to be your provider and pharmacy of choice

This letter was released by the Amazon CEO last week.  They already had a mail order pharmacy to deliver medications, and now they want to be your healthcare provider as well.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/22/amazon-closes-deal-to-buy-primary-care-provider-one-medical.html

Remember our discussion on the private equity acquisitions of healthcare?  Here is the latest one.  Amazon acquired One Medical for 3.9 BILLION dollars.  The sale was finalized in mid-February.

“Amazon agreed last July to acquire One Medical to deepen its presence in health care, and “dramatically improve” the experience of getting medical care. Amazon has long had ambitions to expand into health care, buying online pharmacy PillPack in 2018 for $750 million, then launching its own virtual clinic for chronic conditions, and prescription perks for Prime members.  The deal gives Amazon access to One Medical’s more than 200 brick-and-mortar medical offices in 26 markets, and roughly 815,000 members.”

This is another example of a smaller medical company (200 brick and mortar locations) that are now part of the biggest conglomerate there is: Amazon.  I am gonna take a wild guess that if you see one of the Amazon providers, they are gonna push you to have their mail order pharmacy send you meds as well.  They are charging a yearly fee to see their providers ($199) but if you are Prime subscriber, then you get a $50 discount and its $149 per year for Amazon healthcare.

Interestingly enough, this merger has FTC concerns and their radar is up.  “While Amazon waited out the required period to close the deal, the FTC could still decide to bring a case to unwind the merger at a later point — a right it reserves in any deal it reviews. The FTC under Chair Lina Khan has sent out letters to some parties seeking to merge saying that while they can’t hold up the merger any longer because the deadline has passed, they are still investigating and could take legal action at a later date. Still, breaking up a merger is often more difficult in a practical sense once two businesses are formally combined.

“The FTC’s investigation of Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical continues,” said FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar. “The commission will continue to look at possible harms to competition created by this merger as well as possible harms to consumers that may result from Amazon’s control and use of sensitive consumer health information held by One Medical.”

Do you really want the company who delivers your toiletries to your doorstep to also have access to your protected healthcare information?  What if, you are not vaccinated, and you decide to give this Amazon/One Medical a try, and they decide someday to cancel deliveries to your house because you are not vaccinated?  After the last three years, I would say nothing is impossible.  What better way to stop you from getting a billion different things from food to toiletries to electronics delivered to someone than to say “oh sorry your vaccine status is not up to date and you can no longer order blah blah until that is remedied”.

I would stay far away from this.  And if you are a current One Medical customer, I would find a new healthcare provider.