Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#271

Post by apk136 » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

llee37x wrote: post #2

Just a heads up, if you use this service PillPack and Amazon Employees have full access to your entire prescription history. Full name, social everything - it was common for employees to look up the info of celebrities / other employees for fun. Any prescription / healthcare info you give them will be sold back to SureScripts and used to sell you more garbage from Amazon ;) https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-mail-or…

I worked on this project and can tell you this is absolutely false. All user info is obfuscated and we have procedures in place to ensure we do not have access to information without express consent from the user. Furthermore, we dont even use surescript anymore. Lastly, all data is walled off from amazon. There is no way for amazon to even know if you are signed up for pharmacy.It is a separate account with a separate cart and all amazon metrics are blocked from this ecosystem.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#272

Post by apk136 » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

nerdjon wrote: post #46

I personally already use PillPack, but what I am more curious is this line that so far I can only find on the verge and not any of the Amazon pages. "Prime members will also be able to save on medication bought in person from over 50,000 pharmacies across the US, including Rite Aid, CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens." I assume that means that Amazon actually worked with all of these companies? Does anyone see that on any o…

PrimeRx. if you have prime and signup you get it free

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#273

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:36 AM UTC

astura wrote: post #264

kgin wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What laws do they break?

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/10/09/california-osha-fines-am... https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN25Y1C6 https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-fined-us-government-selling-... https://www.businessinsurance.com/article/00010101/STORY/912... https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/amazon-dangero... https://www.insider.com/amazon-selling-toxic-toys-lead-poiso... https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/amazon-haz…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#274

Post by liminal » Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

I wonder if Amazon will have sufficient buying clout to get better medication prices that they can pass along to consumers. That's been a huge benefit of centralized universal healthcare buying in other countries.

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#275

Post by ericd » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #265

ericd wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably some inefficiencies baked into the price? There are massive inefficiencies at every level. I probably wouldn't share this "it's the way it is because it has to be" reasoning if you've never looked into why US healthcare is as expensive as it is. For a decent overview: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/why-does-health-care-co... "Just to give you one example, Duke University Hospital has 900 hospital beds…

You need context for that because your article is incorrect about Canada. Across all of Canada, on average, there are still 1.1 clerks per bed. (1,100 clerks for every 1,000 beds) [0] [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4511963/#:~:tex... .

Interesting. What do all of those clerks do in the Canadian system vs the US system? Would you say that the Canadian system is a paragon of efficiency?

Re: Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy for prescription medicine delivery

#276

Post by int_19h » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 9:12 AM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #267

unclenoriega wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to trying to point out the scale of the "inefficiencies" inherent in current pharmacy billing practices (and in my understanding medical billing in general). The prices are literally just made up[0], and then payors have to guess how much they should pay. "That's not how it works", perhaps a poor choice of words was intended to reflect that if a drug costs $2000 per month or even $500/month, often that m…

> I would point that "free at the point of service" does seem to be one sense of "free". Sure, and my contention (going back to the grandparent) is that is an illusion. I'd be more than happy to give you a car for free and then just charge you later if you thought you were getting it for free. I want people to continue to be aware that even drugs that are sensibly priced do still bear costs to society. > which is not…

They're saying that most of the price of the drug is way in excess of the actual costs involved. So the only reason why anyone is paying that much is because somebody is trying to collect significant economic rents from their drug purchases. In a not-for-profit healthcare system, or one where drug prices are regulated, this overhead would simply not exist.