71–80 of 155 posts
Um wtf. This is akin to comcast buying NBC. This is not good.
I see this as a move towards providing cheap basic medical care. This is timely now that it's possible that the individual mandate will be repealed. Millions of uninsured people could be treated for rashes or flus by nurses at CVS cheaper and faster than at doctor's offices. More competition in healthcare could be a good thing--many say it's bloated and overpriced. The risk is that poor people get basic care while ri…
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> IF you want to disrupt the pharma market, just let drug importation go free, Yup. Allowing reimports of prescription drugs would be the single easiest way to have a massive effect on the costs of care in the US, with pretty much no negative impact on patients, providers, or pharmaceutical companies in the US.
How would that not significantly harm the pharmaceutical companies? Don't they make a decent percentage of their revenue off of brands which are currently price protected via these tariffs?
Yes. If consumers and/or pharmacies in the US could easily and reliably source cheaper brand-name drugs from international markets where price ceilings are in effect, it would ruin many drug companies, especially smaller ones.
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> IF you want to disrupt the pharma market, just let drug importation go free, Yup. Allowing reimports of prescription drugs would be the single easiest way to have a massive effect on the costs of care in the US, with pretty much no negative impact on patients, providers, or pharmaceutical companies in the US.
How would that not significantly harm the pharmaceutical companies? Don't they make a decent percentage of their revenue off of brands which are currently price protected via these tariffs?
I see this as a move towards providing cheap basic medical care. This is timely now that it's possible that the individual mandate will be repealed. Millions of uninsured people could be treated for rashes or flus by nurses at CVS cheaper and faster than at doctor's offices. More competition in healthcare could be a good thing--many say it's bloated and overpriced. The risk is that poor people get basic care while ri…
I sometimes think that's one of the things that's kept health care so expensive. Nursing salaries aren't cheap. A lot of the home health and basic clinic stuff could be handled by an LPN/LVN or even a Paramedic in many cases. Not everything needs an RN. There are plenty of available telemedicine options to put a provider in touch with a higher level of care if necessary.
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> IF you want to disrupt the pharma market, just let drug importation go free, Yup. Allowing reimports of prescription drugs would be the single easiest way to have a massive effect on the costs of care in the US, with pretty much no negative impact on patients, providers, or pharmaceutical companies in the US.
How would that not significantly harm the pharmaceutical companies? Don't they make a decent percentage of their revenue off of brands which are currently price protected via these tariffs?
Um wtf. This is akin to comcast buying NBC. This is not good.
Thank you, the top comment and all its follow-up seem to think it's a good thing and may lower cost. It's hard for me to imagine this being anything less than a way to make more money with the combined companies.
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Don’t the walking dead already pick up prescriptions there? I share your concern. Maybe they could service people out of Tesla Semis in the parking lot? Only half joking.
Why do we still have to pick prescriptions up? We have pizza delivery — why not for medicines? Order your drugs with an app and it shows up at your door.
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Drug distributor is probably the easiest space for Amazon to get into, but it's not where the cost savings opportunities lie. Margin isn't very high in that space. In order for anti trust flag to be raised through vertical integration like this, the combined entity would need to start buying up other entities in the vertical chain. I'm actually interested in how this plays out.
There's excessive concentration at every level of the health care industry. The top 3 PBMs have 80% of the market. Hospitals have consolidated. Doctors practices have consolidated. Consolidation begets consolidation as everyone seeks to increase their leverage over suppliers and customers. If Amazon is going to get into the pharmacy business they'll probably become a distributor as well since it's an outgrowth of the…
Are you sure about this? Hospital and provider networks are probably the most fragmented layer in the healthcare vertical stack, by far.
In the For Profit space, I would agree with you, top 3 dominates. But if you throw in non-profit into mix, their power gets really diluted.
https://www.compassphs.com/blog/healthcare-trends/healthcare...