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Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

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Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#171

Post by ceejayoz »

Kalium wrote: post #164
throwaway201103 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may all be true, but for me the trust is long gone. That's the price they pay for not taking the counterfeiting problem seriously. They've literally demonstrated that they prioritize sales and shipping efficiency over honesty.

What actions could they take, today, that would demonstrate to your satisfaction that they take counterfeiting and honesty seriously?

A few off-the-top-of-my-head things:

Removal of the algorithmic "Amazon's Choice" label.

Human review of all listings, including changes to them.

Drastic reduction in number of sellers, show the seller company's age w/Amazon as well as the age of the listing and revision history.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#172

Post by [deleted] »

dave5104 wrote: post #95
mhh__ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> price negotiator Would you prefer the government to negotiate the price of your car for you? Markets are a powerful tool

If the difference between affording a car and not being able to afford a car would kill me, then maybe I would like the government to step in to negotiate on behalf of all of its citizens.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#173

Post by ineedasername »

bhupy wrote: post #143
dave5104 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the difference between affording a car and not being able to afford a car would kill me, then maybe I would like the government to step in to negotiate on behalf of all of its citizens.

Not being able to afford food can also kill you (you would starve to death). Is that a sufficient justification for the government to step in to negotiate food prices on behalf of its citizens? There are merits to government price controls and there are certainly countries that have employed them successfully. That said, it isn’t the only solution to bending the cost curve, and there are also downsides to price contr…

It may not directly negotiate the prices of food, and that's fine: If there's another form of intervention that would provide healthcare to people without directly negotiating the price, I'd be fine with that too. However, the government has not subsidized the healthcare industry to the point where healthcare is as accessible as food.

Healthcare is not just a demand-side issue. There is also constrained supply. I'd be happy to see the government subsidize supply production (building new medical schools etc) in a similar way that it subsidizes food production.

I'm by no means advocating government negotiation or single-payer or medicare-for-all as the thing the government must do on this issue. I'm fine with a form of intervention that allows the market forces to go the last mile in this.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#174

Post by burkaman »

bhupy wrote: post #150
claudeganon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that a sufficient justification for the government to step in to negotiate food prices on behalf of its citizens? Yes? We already do this? For many years directly in the postwar period and now indirectly through agriculture subsidies and programs like SNAP. Making sure everyone has enough to eat is step one of having any kind of functioning society and why it’s always been a source of massive government interven…

Yes, that's the whole point. SNAP and directed subsidies are decidedly NOT the same as government prices-setting. The analog in healthcare is targeted subsidies for poor people that cannot afford care, not government negotiation and price setting. Making sure everyone has access to healthcare is, for the most part, a universally held goal. The disagreement is whether the only way to achieve that is through government…

> The analog in healthcare is targeted subsidies for poor people that cannot afford care

Food subsidies aren't targeted at the poor. The US government spends many billions of dollars subsidizing corn and soybeans and other crops that lower food prices for huge portions of America.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#175

Post by claudeganon »

bhupy wrote: post #150
claudeganon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that a sufficient justification for the government to step in to negotiate food prices on behalf of its citizens? Yes? We already do this? For many years directly in the postwar period and now indirectly through agriculture subsidies and programs like SNAP. Making sure everyone has enough to eat is step one of having any kind of functioning society and why it’s always been a source of massive government interven…

Yes, that's the whole point. SNAP and directed subsidies are decidedly NOT the same as government prices-setting. The analog in healthcare is targeted subsidies for poor people that cannot afford care, not government negotiation and price setting. Making sure everyone has access to healthcare is, for the most part, a universally held goal. The disagreement is whether the only way to achieve that is through government…

“Access” in this context is just a weasel-word cooked up by hospitals and insurance companies to protect their bottom lines. Almost every other wealthy, developed country guarantees healthcare itself, not the right to get surprise billed or screwed by your insurance company. And even those countries that are closer to the American model (e.g Germany and the Netherlands) don’t let these industries get away with egregious abuse of people at their most vulnerable, as happens in the US. I don’t agree that I want people with critical illnesses or disabilities (or anyone else) to get “access” to healthcare. I want them to receive healthcare itself and pay for it with my taxes.

SNAP and ag subsidies are also just price controls with extra steps. We can argue about their efficacy, but they’re far closer to price controls than anything like free markets, especially given the increasing monopolistic control of industrial agriculture in the US.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#176

Post by sithlord »

bhupy wrote: post #7

> Amazon claims Prime members will be able to save “up to 80 percent off generic and 40 percent off brand name medications when paying without insurance. This was buried in the article, but is IMO a bigger deal. In the long run, this could really drive down drug prices.

They say that, but then I looked up Insulin price, and it was astronautical. Even compared to normal drug stores.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#177

Post by seneca »

This strikes me as a tone deaf move for Amazon. They're increasingly losing consumer confidence and are starting, anecdotally at least, to be regarded as closer to a flea market or eBay than a trustworthy retailer. They really need to shore up the issues with tainted supplies in their core retail business before I would ever consider them for something as sensitive as pharmaceuticals, regardless of how much they promise its handled differently.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#178

Post by ineedasername »

ev1 wrote: post #111
dudus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised, there's some serious shenanigans on medicine pricing and insurances. Medicine prices are clearly inflated when you can buy at a huge discount using insurance, but then you can get apps like GoodRX, which is free and give you coupons that far exceed my insurance discount on every single time I had to fill a prescription. To the point that I don't even bother going through insurance anymore. I saved…

I'm curious who or what the end goal of GoodRx is. They pay for expensive ($$$$$$) cloud anti-bot/anti-scraping, captcha you after a few requests if you run adblock, they pay for extensive browser/device (attempting to reidentify a user across multiple devices/multiple browsers) fingerprinting services and Fastly. The site loads a dozen trackers, googletagmanager, branch, segment, what are they doing with this data?…

Their end-game is collecting user data & collecting a referral fee when people use their "insurance". (The coupons generally are not actual coupons, they present as an insurance coverage policy & code that pharmacies use the same way they would your normal insurance card). That's how they make their money.

Personally, for me, the data they can collect off of me when I go to their site is worth the ~$2,000 I save every month. (actually I don't have to use them: I am prudent, and part of my contingency planning for losing my job is to know exactly what expenses I could strip away, and how (and for how long) I could continue to pay for the bare essentials. GoodRx is part of that planning for the healthcare end of things)

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#179

Post by fuzxi »

mfer wrote: post #59
SamuelAdams wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will Amazon use the tracking information from drug purchases? Likely not at all. HIPAA comes into play here. Typically any information provided under a HIPAA context cannot be used for solicitation or marketing purposes. For non-USA amazon users, I'm sure other laws apply. Source: used to work at a big retailer and had to remind managers of this frequently when they wanted to "integrate data from all these syst…

Amazon has a history of taking patented designs, copying them, selling them for less with better visibility, and threatening patent holders. This is an element that speaks to the character of the organization. So, that makes me wonder... > Typically any information provided under a HIPAA context cannot be used for solicitation or marketing purposes. I wonder if they could put in their terms & conditions that you give…

>I wonder if they could put in their terms & conditions that you give them permission to do it.

ToS agreements and EULAs are not legally binding. You can't sign away your rights.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#180

Post by sithlord »

penthi wrote: post #78

Truepill.com has api's for pharmacy fulfillment (including pharmacy transfers) https://docs.truepill.com/#introduction [disclosure : I work there]

This sounds interesting; Would be interested in knowing more about what you all do, and if you all hire remote :D
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