So they're gonna undercut pharmacies until they corner the market and then jack prices back up, but higher than before and reep all that profit. Right?
Not only will it give Amazon a new market to lord over, but more data on its customers. Knowing what illnesses a person has will help them sell other items by advertising things that will seem tantalizing. Bipolar makes you impulse buy? Amazon will know that. Depression makes you crave sweets? Amazon can sell that. Bezos doesn't care how predatory this business practice is because he's a monster and all of humanity is his prey.
I work retail pharmacy. My specific job title is Inventory Technician, which means that my job in addition to the regular duties of a technician (inputting prescriptions, filling prescriptions, navigating insurance issues, ringing out patients for their prescriptions, ensuring paperwork is filed, ensuring confidentiality laws are adhered to, etc.) I’m also in charge of ordering medicine, as well as ensuring that expired medicines are disposed of and recalled medications are pulled from our shelves and waiting bins.
Now, the reason why Amazon is able to undercut the prices of Pharmacies is because basically, they are going directly from the manufacturer to the patient, which allows them to bypass the standard issues that we at retail have to deal with with insurance (basically in the US when your insurance pays for your drugs they pay a certain amount to the manufacturer, a certain amount to the vendor, a certain amount to the Pharmacy, and then the rest is usually your copay.) Since they are the vendor and pharmacy, they can just go directly from price of purchase from manufacturer to patient. But there’s another issue I see here. Amazon is probably sourcing their drugs from a cheap market. And let me tell you something, I have had to deal with a lot of Class I and Class II drug recalls this past year that my pharmacy was unaffected by because we didn’t use the “cheap” suppliers.
Amazon WILL cut corners to maximize their profits on this, they WILL use the lowest bid supplier for their drugs and there WILL be class I recalls on their medication, and at that point the users will have to what? Mail it back to Amazon and have them send a replacement?
I also know how much of an issue prescriptions can be when a Doctor sends in ambiguous scripts, but Amazon isn’t going to care about clear instructions. Hell, I doubt they’re really going to actually have someone go through and type up the clear instructions, it will probably just take the escript data and type it up exactly as it came in and send it to billing and filling. So be prepared to get a shipment from Amazon containing a single insulin pen that’s supposed to last a month because the doctor put a dispense quantity of 1 box, but the escript said 1 pckge and the computer interpreted a package to be a single pen.
Now technically PHI law states that Amazon is legally not allowed to use your health profile to market items to you. Practically that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. I already have had one person tell me that they abandoned setting up an Amazon profile because they were worried about the personal questions being asked.
However one of the biggest concerns is that they’ll offer a system “for conveniences’ sake” where if your credit card is attached to your Amazon profile that they’ll just automatically fill, bill, and send your medications to you. And that this system will bypass all insurance and DUR issues. Doctor sent a $300 rx for eyedrops? Yup, that comes to you no chance to say “can we call my doctor for a cheaper alternative?” You have a peanut allergy and they sent in a prescription for Progesterone? Sure, here you go. Patient is on Suboxone and the doctor sent in an RX for Norco? Have at it buddy!
And when something inevitably happens, they’ll just shrug and go “oh well, we’re not liable because reasons!”
The $300 eyedrop situation is real. There are multiple very good and common eyedrops out there that sometimes copay for $10 but sometimes end up costing $600. And sometimes we don't know which one it will be until the patient shows up at the pharmacy. I always, ALWAYS tell my patients not to pay more than a certain amount of those drops and have the pharmacy call me if it ends up being more. Amazon will not do that. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as the above comment says. Also, not only will Amazon be able to undercut prices because of cutting out middlemen and using inexpensive sources, but they can literally afford to sell at a loss. A lot of large corporations do this to destroy their competition and then, once they're the only option left, they jack up the prices again. But Amazon can afford to lose money on prescription drug sales for a few years while it corners the market. Bezos is the richest man in the world. A few million in losses over a few years to secure the American pharmaceutical market is completely worth it to him. And the profit he'll make down the road will pay him back for those losses and then some. Private pharmacies will never be able to compete, and even other large pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS won't be able to keep up unless they find a way to stay a step ahead of Bezos. Amazon needs to be broken up. It is monopolizing our entire market, every corner of it. And healthcare needs to be public so everyone gets drugs for the same price regardless of where you're getting them from.
