I’ve had pretty good experiences ordering from Amazon - reasonable prices (with careful selection), surprisingly fast delivery - or indication this will not be the case. I like the Kindle stuff. I presume Amazon is within industry tolerances about intangibles like privacy - meaning it could probably be better.
Read in a recent Economist that Amazon was planning to move into providing medicine, causing other pharmacy companies stock prices to drop. Supposedly, they are willing to offer 80% discounts to Amazon Prime members to get their business - not sure how long that might last. Certainly, they have lots of bargaining power, international influence and expertise. There is need, desire to avoid waiting and probably money to be made - so Amazon might be making a good move.
But pharmacy is still a profession - and they teach folks how to use inhalers and discuss side effects. Not that these can’t be easily automated, but one might want the chance to ask questions and such. Privacy is another concern - Amazon insists it is there, real and isolated from other uses.
Anyone see any significant advantages? Potential problems?
A lot of people on regular prescriptions are already getting their meds in 90 day increments through the mail. I believe this is the market Amazon is really going after.
Yes, nobody is going to get a short-term prescription for immediate use (like an antibiotic) from Amazon. But I already get my blood pressure and cholesterol prescriptions from a mail order pharmacy - I don’t see how getting them from Amazon would be different
FYI, what you’re calling Amazon Pharmacy might be what used to be called PillPack, a company that Amazon bought in June 2018. At that time, they were already licensed in every state.
Prescription drug pricing is crazy. The vast majority of people have health insurance and if you have it the price the consumer pays for a drug depends on the deductibles and copays for the particular plan. It turns out that sometimes it is cheaper to pay cash for a drug than the insurance companies’ copay. Walmart for example has a few dozen generics with a cash price of either $4 or $9/month. There are a number of companies which provide free coupons to get cheaper drugstore prices; GoodRx is the biggest. Amazon Pharmacy (a brand new offering and not the same as PillPack) offers both a mail order pharmacy and a coupon system like GoodRx. The only thing to do is to plug the numbers in for each drug to find out the cost at various possibilities [try for example Amazon Pharmacy (the general Amazon search, restricted to Amazon Pharmacy on the left side drop-down) and GoodRX and look up your health insurance formulary to see what copay level each drug is].