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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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add a 4th service for health insurance in the US to be a way for healthy, young people to pay for the care of sicker, old people due. AKA, a tax, due to the following stipulations of the ACA. 1) Age Rating Factors https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Programs-and-Initiatives/Health-In... 2) Out of pocket maximums for in network care 3) Elimination of pre-existing conditions, i.e. accepting all lives no matter how costly…

You will get old

I know. I wasn’t complaining about it being a tax. I wish it was implemented properly by dumping everyone on healthcare.gov and removing employers from the equation. And reinstating penalty for not buying health insurance.

Or implementing taxpayer funded healthcare.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#202
post #45
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they do a better job in lots of other countries? I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that a lot of the countries with socialized medicine such that their government is the one negotiating with drug manufacturers pay substantially less for drugs than customers in the US.

I've been reading some books on the medical industry and one of the things pointed out is that the price controls will often not provide enough profit to R&D new drugs. That the US ends up subsidizing a lot of R&D cost that everyone benefits from. If this is the case, I wonder what would happen to drug development if that goes away. Note, I'm not saying there's not too much profit from drugs. These statements don't h…

So that assertion is only sorta true.

Initial discovery research is pretty much entirely tax payer funded. There's then a second phase, moving from that discovery to POC, that is extremely underfunded, and which a lot of charity and such funding goes toward. It's only the last phase, taking POCs -> product, that companies really invest in. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK50972/

Now, that capital investment is not a trivial amount of money (about 80 billion in 2018 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/265085/research-and-deve... ), but it still is only 17% of drug company revenues - https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060115/how-much-dru...

Note, too, that private companies tend to fund research toward common first world diseases, since they're profit driven, and far less to niche and/or common third world diseases. So not only do they not fund early discovery (government does that), nor generally moving those discoveries to POCs ('valley of death', and charitable foundations and the like do that), they also leave plenty of potential meds untouched, since the likely profitability is low.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#203
post #86

This is absurd. At what point do normal people start calling this a monopoly?

It's a pity you got downvoted (due to an immediate first reply -- happens more and more), but my first reaction was exactly the same as yours. Amazon got richer during COVID19. Bezos got way richer. To be honest, I am not actually convinced that monopolies are by definition bad, but Amazon strikes me evermore as a bad instantiation of it.

Horror story: imagine the Amazon Pharmacy being flooded with Chinese sellers. This is also why I don’t like to shop on Amazon anymore. You can find the same sellers on AliExpress – cheaper and from the same source, if that’s what you want (and sometimes, it is what you want). (Even if you'd want to offer as a counterpoint their other ventures in e.g. cloud, one could offer a rebuttal again in the way how they're treating their engineers.) I was a huge Amazon customer in the past, but I implicitly feel less and less inclined to buy there. The only benefit for me is the very forthcoming customer support (if you chat with a rep and honestly complain about a bad product, they’ll go all the way -- in fact it's only lately I've seen other local web shops finally approach this central point).

It’s always the same with them: “look, here’s this new innovative thing where we streamlined the product and ignored the possible ways to game it.” Great on the former, why didn’t you care about the latter.

Also: what I find funny is that everyone defending Amazon today as a shining example of capitalism, often the same types being against that “horrible” communism, might find it interesting to ponder the question how Amazon is organized and how much revenue they’re generating. It’s a planned economy. Not by a state, but by a company. With one head at the top.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#204
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of the Govt being the price negotiator, we got giant corporations instead. yay

You really believe the government will do a better job?

Check out the book "The Long Fix". It goes into detail on this quite a bit, and yes, the government does a better job by a longshot.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#205
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'd rather use a real pharmacy to mail my pills. They have online ordering at several.

Amazon didn't get to where it is by being idiots. They will enforce the rules when they know they need to enforce the rules.

And that's often to the detriment of the consumer.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of the Govt being the price negotiator, we got giant corporations instead. yay

Next up Renaissance style guild wars between rival companies Amazon endorsed candidate vs Walmart endorsed candidates

Snow Crash is coming true.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#207
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.

When I signed up it estimated that I would be paying whatever my co-pay is for each of my prescriptions which is a great deal more than what I pay just going through Walmart. Like more than double more.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#209
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.

So savings are similar to GoodRx, RxSaver, and WellRx?

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#210
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s captured by (1) risk sharing. Pooled risk sharing is great for things like fire departments where out of 1000 homes, one might catch fire every few months. It’s also great for societies where out of 1000 people, a small handful suffer from chronic illnesses or tragic accidents and the remaining are healthy. The problem is that it’s just a hammer, and not everything in healthcare is a nail.

Taxes are basically risk sharing across the whole population. But I wanted to specify that it's not risk sharing like your auto insurance is, or home insurance, or term life insurance. Those are infrequent, random events for the most part. Whereas, healthcare is a guaranteed expense, so the premiums are just prepaying for the coming expenses. But today, you're not paying for your healthcare expenses, but for the olde…

It's incorrect to say that premiums are only prepaying for coming expenses, but not risk sharing. They cover both. That's the whole point, health insurance today is a bundle of all of those things.

While FICA taxes (partially) pay for senior citizens' healthcare, your health insurance premiums both pay for your annual physical (especially on Platinum PPO plans) as well as care for sicker people that are not eligible for Medicare/Medicaid. I assure you that there are plenty of sick people that are under the age of 65, and actuaries price them in when computing premiums for private health insurance.

And as a minor point of order, even Medicare isn't "free" for seniors — the FICA taxes only cover Part A benefits, and seniors still need to pay monthly premiums to Medicare to cover Part B benefits. And even those benefits aren't 100% covered — Medicare only covers 80% of outpatient care.

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