This was buried in the article, but is IMO a bigger deal. In the long run, this could really drive down drug prices.
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 thousands on medicine by just checking on GoodRx before buying it.
The coupons aren't unique or require a login, why go through all of this? All the services they use are "request demo / contact us for enterprise pricing", not free-to-sign-up SaaS either. Just who is paying for all this and with what?
Combine that with a culture that overvalues all university diplomas as equal, while disregarding the economic opportunities of at least half of them are almost nil, and you have a great recipe for massive failure for a big percentage of the young population.
The half baked social programs always do this. Same with how rent control in NYC and Toronto in the 1970s ended up significantly reducing the supply of low-income housing because it stopped incentivizing developers from building cheap houses in cities that had it (they just went elsewhere) while also ghettoizing a bunch of neighbourhoods because there was zero incentive to maintain buildings (which led to mass arsons in places like harlem).
If you're going to socialize it either go all the way and nationalize it/fully fund it or find a way that doesn't fuck the citizens over (like these glorified schemes to hand money over to politicially-connected middlemen like big pharma and diploma mills). OR in most cases just let the market do it's job. Like letting generic drug makers take over markets way sooner, without the multitude of government protection rackets that protect big pharma (including FDAs giant backlog). Meanwhile (social) media blames capitalism for every expensive drug or tuition price... like it actually makes sense for ANY market to charge a working class person $1000/pill.
These flaws seem so obvious to me but are repeated in so many western countries, not just the US. While blame goes in so many randomly misguided directions. Often heavily greased by the people who benefit from these schemes.
https://www.walmart.com/cp/4-prescriptions/1078664
Prescription Program includes up to a 30-day supply for $4 and a 90-day supply for $10 of some covered generic drugs at commonly prescribed dosages.
Amazon appears to be incentivizing customers to not use insurance to pay for their drugs. I’m not sure if Walmart does the same. If so, that’s also noteworthy.
yay
Would you prefer the government to negotiate the price of your car for you? Markets are a powerful tool
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-order-pharmacy-face...
I worked at PillPack for over 3 years, and while I haven't been there for a while this seems like a very bold claim that is wildly inconsistent with the sort of practices I saw followed in my time there.
I don't think using a throwaway to throw shade like this is the right way to handle such a serious matter, but whatever -- if you do legitimately want to address this issue let me know; I could point you to a contact at the company and/or outside of it that would take it seriously and investigate it, as this is very alarming and unacceptable (speaking also as a customer whose data is there).
I know the hoops I have to go through just to access customer resource metadata in AWS Support. There are multiple, auditable checks that force you to provide access justification to resources -- and the process is routinely modified to make it more onerous and restrictive.
If we have dual control mechanisms to access routine information about a customer's VPC, I'd be shocked if Amazon didn't have auditable controls on Amazon Pharmacy.
That's not necessarily a problem or a HIPAA violation, depending on how it's used, although the opportunity for abuse exists. They cover their ass with annual HIPAA training.
On the other hand, the information you describe from a pharmacy customer isn't “HIPAA adjacent”, it's just plain HIPAA PHI. on the gripping hand, lots of places have fairly weak internal controls on access to PHI; there is no required independent certification of practices, only after-the-fact enforcement when an unauthorized use occurs, is reported, and is investigated. And lots of places that haven't been caught out yet have training in what your not allowed to do with data, but inadequate controls on what you can do and inadequate auditing of what you have done.
From that article, “Surescripts did, however, inform CVS and Express Scripts ahead of time about its plans to go public with its decision, the spokesmen said.”
My clients in the financial services industry take their PCI and critical risk data access very seriously. Those clients had to share with me the software, controls and training they put into place to enforce those access rules, and I confirmed with long-time employees they've walked staff out of call centers summarily fired for joy-riding the data. I can believe the situation at hospitals can be looser, but financial services being more strict than pharma fulfillment or PBM's would be news to me. I've only had two clients in the PBM space, and they didn't seem to take their infosec lightly either, but that is a much smaller sample space so I'd be interested to hear from those who work in the trenches in PBM's or pharma fulfillment what it is like for them.
> if you use this service PillPack and Amazon Employees have full access to your entire prescription history
That's not what the article you linked says
> Any prescription / healthcare info you give them will be sold back to SureScripts and used to sell you more garbage from Amazon ;)
That's not what the article you linked says
So, if I wasn't able to look what book a customer purchased, I highly doubt I could see anyone's RX, especially since HIPAA is very clear on those points.
TL;DR: I think your claim is full of it.
Literally illegal
[disclosure : I work there]
Afaik, Amazon Pharmacy doesn't work in a marketplace model.
Should people be comfortable with Amazon tracking their drug purchases alongside all the other tracking they do of them?
How will Amazon use the tracking information from drug purchases?
Amazon has copied many patented products to sell under their own brand. Would they do that with drugs and use the same tactics?
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 systems".
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 them permission to do it.
One of the things recently brought up is Amazon copying the designs of patented things (not generic). Then selling copies of the patented items.
Drugs are going to be a different animal and there is regulation there which may stop it.
https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/uber-health-launches-pre...
Absolutely no way mixing the gig economy with PHI ends well.
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.
Much to a larger issue, though, is the question: Do we really need pharmacists that much anymore? Vending systems would accomplish the same task, for less money. I contend most people don't even speak to a pharmacist anymore.
While compounding pharmacists are still useful for those esoteric formularies, I would wager "normal" US pharmacists are still relied upon by the vast segment of the US population who are near-functionally illiterate and innumerate, on a big combination of drugs (don't get me started on how unhealthy swathes of the US population are), and cannot be bothered to work out for themselves drug interactions (much less how to get off of the drugs if possible). The disjointed nature of the US healthcare system promotes such inefficiencies.
Theoretically it could be replaced with a large database but that is a major undertaking to encode once, let alone keep it up to date. In practice there are also trade-offs and judgement calls like "Yeah this may cause kidney failure but living on dialysis is better than dying of cancer."
Once a month they text me saying "hey, your 'script is ready", I click the link, put in my CCV... and 2 days later my meds show up at my house. Every month, like clockwork.
I wonder what items can't be delivered. I suspect a large uptick in the theft of Amazon deliveries with this news.
"Notably, the pharmacy will not sell Schedule II medications, which includes many common opioids like Oxycontin."
But, that does still leave expensive meds, like diabetes drugs.
Beyond insulin, schedule 3 or lower designated drugs include: Suboxone, Ketamine, Klonopin, Xanax, and Valium.
- 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.
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.
And what do you mean by "obviously illegal"? What is "obvious" or "common sense" about the law can be very wrong with a little research. Cocaine is obviously illegal! Except for the fact it is Schedule 2 and has niche legitimate medical uses and is important enough emergency rooms keep it on hand.
The most interesting part to me: "...Le Roux decided to diversify and expand into illegal activities around 2007..." I guess I've never really thought about how people end up in these criminal enterprises, but I certainly didn't think they just decide to one day.
Thanks for sharing that!
"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 of the Amazon pages?
Unless something has gone horribly wrong, I doubt Amazon Pharmacy is looking to be a "marketplace" with third party sellers like that.
Yay, Venture Capital x the Pharmaceutical industrial complex. What could go wrong?
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.
Edit to remove snarky tone.
We're talking about picking 6 labelled items from a shelf and putting them in a paper bag. How someone can get that wrong over and over again baffles me?
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.
If Amazon can listen to my breathing through Alexa, forecast an imminent health issue, and then Prime some pills to me before I even need them, that's a pretty awesome future.
We need to find a way to keep them from becoming evil and shipping me pain meds on subscription if I don't actually need them, sure, but technology has always been making the world better, and Amazon has the power to make it better on steroids.
Check out the Boots Riley directed movie Sorry To Bother You [1], they have a big company in that movie, called WorryFree, that is similar to Amazon where they offer lifetime labour contracts, it’s a very promising future! /sarcasm
They also received major negative publicity about the "Solar Eclipse Glasses" they sold that damages many people's eyes in 2017 [1]. I think it has cooled as a news topic, given the plethora of topics in 2020, but (again, anecdotally) I don't think the opinion has restored. At least it hasn't in my social and family groups.
0: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-ceded-control-of-its...
1: https://fortune.com/2017/08/14/amazon-refund-solar-eclipse-g...
