91–100 of 276 posts
Given the issue with counterfeit material in their warehouses, I don’t even know what they could do to make me trust their control of the drug supply chain.
Yeah, I'd rather use a real pharmacy to mail my pills. They have online ordering at several.
Given the issue with counterfeit material in their warehouses, I don’t even know what they could do to make me trust their control of the drug supply chain.
Unless something has gone horribly wrong, I doubt Amazon Pharmacy is looking to be a "marketplace" with third party sellers like that.
This is absurd. At what point do normal people start calling this a monopoly?
How is this a monopoly? Walmart is a competitor and they also have a pharmacy.
- Colocation and managed data center services
- Managed technology services
- Ecommerce (in just about every category including food)
- Satellites
- Space flight (Blue Origin)
- IOT Devices
- Government services (managed infrastructure etc)
- Home internet (Kuiper Systems)
- Autonomous vehicles
- Investing
- Pharmacy services
I'm just going to stop here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You really believe the government will do a better job?
As a Canadian, I believe that the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board [1] does quite a good job, judging from the cost of medication up here (broadly speaking). [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/patented-medicine-prices-review.htm...
If anything, Australia is quite generous to pharmaceutical companies. New Zealand's Pharmaceutical Management Agency has much less negotiating power but still manages to obtain substantially lower prices.
For myself I can't help but wonder if lump-sum licensing might not be more effective. Pharmaceuticals are a bit like software: very high R&D cost, but the marginal cost to manufacture is very small. A one-time payment to sink a large chunk of R&D for a drug might be quicker and easier than guessing at a price. On the other hand, I have no experience in health economics, so it's possible this is a terrible idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of the Govt being the price negotiator, we got giant corporations instead. yay
> price negotiator Would you prefer the government to negotiate the price of your car for you? Markets are a powerful tool
Just wondering why couldn’t Walgreens do this? During covid, Walgreens is still one store that you must visit physically to get your prescription. I always thought there was some crazy health care regularization that prevented medicine delivery.
Nope. Both major pharmacy chains (Walgreens, CVS) and pharmacy startups (Capsule, Alto) have been around for years.
I used to collect from CVS in person because they were downstairs from my office, but they nagged me constantly to switch to mailed pharmaceuticals. Now that I'm WFH I use Alto, who deliver.
As a British citizen, this is so disturbing to me.
As an American resident, I couldn't be more excited for Amazon to disrupt the reprehensible anti-customer practices endemic to the US healthcare system. Recently, I had a runny nose and no fever and thought, "what the heck, let's get a COVID test", and found out they are $200+ here in Austin.
Companies that big should not be allowed to operate. They will have too much personal data and incredible unfair competitive advantage on the market. It's when capitalism doesn't work and where it needs to have emergency stops. Amazon needs to be split into independent companies. Now that Amazon will also know your medical history, know what you are talking about at home, all your preferences, who you meet, what are…
You're probably right, and I agree with you. However, in this case, the US healthcare system is so terrible and, in some respects, evil that I'm glad Amazon is working to disrupt (what'll probably end up being) large portions of it.
Yay, Venture Capital x the Pharmaceutical industrial complex. What could go wrong?