10 ms·
Amazon is in exploratory talks with generic-drug makers
- deegles 9y agoLooking forward to it. Amazon will eventually be the only middleman needed for commerce. Consumers will only benefit.
- hristov 9y agoNo consumers will not benefit. In a free market economy nobody benefits if they are limited to purchasing from one party only.
- stuffedBelly 9y agoyou are essentially saying you are happy about an upcoming monopoly. Consumers will benefit if there are competitions
- sushid 9y agoConsumers never benefit when there's only a single middleman. Have you not heard of robber barons? Or looked at the effects of a monopoly in an economics class?
- danmaz74 9y agoHaving only one option very rarely benefits consumers.
- shostack 9y agoAmazon no longer reliably has the lowest price on items, instead relying on the reduced friction of Prime to get people to pay more. Amazon also has questionable quality and reliability these days with co-mingled inventory, 3rd party sellers, and reviews that are impossible to determine the authenticity of. Please enlighten me as to how "consumers will only benefit."
- Lordarminius 9y agoI sincerely hope you're being satirical.
- rangersanger 9y agoYes, I'm sincerely grateful for their benevolence. Bless Bezos for providing me this opportunity to purchase my medicine from him.
- camus2 9y agoMonopolies rarely profit the consumer, but hey, "Welcome to our new overlord Bezos." ...
- srathi 9y agoLooks like the sarcasm is lost here. I assume you were being sarcastic!
- Fej 9y agoPoe's Law is kicking in pretty hard right about now.
- stuffedBelly 9y agoah I see. Didn't think it was sarcasm at first because there are definitely people around me who think that's a good idea, e.g. all my friends who work at Amazon
- ProAm 9y agoI do not trust Amazon with this type of product at all. Their lack of ability or interest in stopping counterfeits now fills me with wary about products that are important to me.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- doughj3 9y agoCan't wait for the "comingled inventory"
- krapp 9y agoYou ordered blue pills, you got "blue pills." What more could a consumer possibly want?
- draw_down 9y agoGood point, but on the other hand people die because drugs that should be inexpensive cost too much.
- paxy 9y agoThey definitely have an interest in stopping counterfeits if it makes them liable for injuries or other lawsuits (e.g. fake chargers, cables, hoverboards, eclipse glasses).
- ungzd 9y agoWarning: TV with sound embedded into page.
- amelius 9y agoAre these drugmakers located in China?
- WillPostForFood 9y agoI'd take Chinese manufactured drugs if it breaks the current hegemony. I already buy stuff from India from sketchy online pharmacies, having some semi-trustworthy body providing any oversight would be a an improvement.
- walshemj 9y agoYou know that these sketchy pharmacies are run by gangsters who have bumped people off (source bbc world service) and also do nice things like sell HIV drugs to poor Africans that don't contain enough of the active agreement
- manmal 9y agoI would not. They had the melamine-in-baby-formula incident, in some regions they have poisoned tap water, and corruption is omnipresent. I‘m too selective about what I put into my body to take any chances there. Eg if they don’t filter water, pills might contain lead.
- philwelch 9y agoThe US has poisoned tap water in some regions, too.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jstarfish 9y agoThis is xenophobic nonsense. China executed or sentenced the executives behind the melamine debacle to life in prison, so there's already been greater accountability than we'd see for the same supply line issues in the US. Flint, Michigan has lead-poisoned tap water. Look at the salmonella cases that pop up every few years and kill handfuls of people. Look at the infants accidentally being given methadone prescriptions. There's never any real consequence for mishaps in the US. Maybe a fine at worst.
- xefer 9y agoI'd be interested in knowing what different pharmacies ultimately charge the various insurance companies for generic drugs. During a job switch I had a couple of weeks were I was covered, but before I got my new insurance ids I paid full price (then reimbursed in full afterward.) A very common generic drug I had a $10 co-pay for, was $139 without insurance at the chain pharmacy I went to. Is this ultimately what the insurance company is paying out? I was shocked. I thought the generic would be mass-produced and only cost, maybe, a few dollars over my $10 co-pay. I suppose of that $139 dollars, only a tiny fraction was the actual drug price; the rest goes into salaries for the pharmacists, business costs and profit. It still seemed pretty outrageous to me. If a company like Amazon ends up only charging back to the insurance company a lot less, on a mass scale, it would hopefully reduce overall insurance costs.
- blaisio 9y ago$139 is almost certainly not what the insurance company would pay. It's also largely a price determined by the pharmacy itself, not the drug manufacturer.
- joering2 9y ago> Is this ultimately what the insurance company is paying out? They get insanely large profit margin and its pretty much a result of years of lobbying and hard-to-get-in type of market. You are absolutely right with your hopes and when Amazon finally kicks in you will see massive "discounts" from Wallgreens CVS etc al... while they will still rack up nice profits! The whole idea behind Amazon looking deep into disturbing this market is exactly the fact how much lobbying and deals-behind-the-curtain are being made jack up the pricing. PS. A friend of mine works high in ranking in Wallgreen and all upper management is truly losing sleep over this. PS2. Same situation applies to aviation. All major players are in shenanigans in price gauging (they simply agree NOT to lower the price) that's why the price of oil went down over 50% meanwhile your average ticket went up 15%. With so much money on hands, I would hope Amazon will eventually disturb flying market in USA; we need it.
- conductr 9y ago> Is this ultimately what the insurance company is paying out? No not at all. “Self pay” was your status and those people pay the highest rates. This is true for almost all US healthcare. Being self pay is basically like going to a car dealer and paying MSRP with no negotiation or rebates, etc. The pharmacy has agreements with wholesalers (sometimes directly with manufacturers) that determines their cost structure of inventory. This includes discounts and rebates and a lot of other cost reductions but All these drugs have sticker price. Insurance companies drive volume and can decide which pharmacies their patients use, thus they can negotiate prices as well. The pharmacy<>insurance transaction is usually going through a PBM, another middle man, that can tell them pretty much instantly what you owe based on your coverage (this is why a pharmacy can give you accurate pricing but doctors offices can’t). There’s a lot of intricacies but the difference between self pay and insured rates can significant. For a generic, I’d be surprised if the pharmacy paid more than 5-20$ but billed you what they could. When insured and you pay 10$, the insurance company has done the math that they will profit on their total generic base even if they lose a little on your purchase (but they probably didn’t). I work in healthcare finance currently at a pharmacy
- madamelic 9y agoYeah no. I am not normally a conspiracy theorist but Amazon manufacturing things to spy on me with audio, video, being able to unlock my doors and now know my prescriptions, naaah.
- jenkstom 9y agoI can only hope that they take steps to control "additives" in pills. My mother (and probably her mother) are allergic to some of the additives in the pill, to the utter disbelief and dismay of many doctors.
- msmm 9y agoAmazon should explore cannabis market. Kush on prime now would be neat.
- jlkjasldk 9y agoAmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health have current contracts with Walgreens. Amazon is trying to reach a 1:1 relationship with generic producers so they can skip purchasing from a vendor, reducing costs. In this effect they would have an advantage over Walgreens, CVS, or Rite-Aid. If Amazon really wanted to they could distribute for one of the aforementioned pharmacy chains as well, provided they are approved by the FDA & DEA.
- refurb 9y agoThe interesting thing is that some drug manufacturers contract directly with pharmacies cutting out the wholesalers.
- conductr 9y agoIt’s all about volume. Wholesalers pool volume but even using a wholesalers does not prevent you from going direct on certain drugs
- pcurve 9y agothe question is, who are they going to sell these drugs to? In order to sell drugs to people, you need pharmacy license in each state.
- late2part 9y agothis is a trivial issue for AMZN to overcome. How hard will it be for them to hire Pharmacy executives, compliance people, etc. Easily done.
- j4ship 9y agoI completely trust Amazon with this product. They have shown the ability to run complex systems at a high quality. I think they can only improve the availability of medicine. Just because counterfeits still happen doesnt mean they are not trying to stop nor does it mean they are doing a bad job. And Im sure there will be further regulations around this then there is for nockoff plastic goods.
- donarb 9y agoWonder if this would be able to solve the problem of price fixing, which has lately become an issue. People think that generic drugs equal cheaper drugs but companies can still manipulate prices to benefit themselves. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-generics/u-s-states-allege-broad-generic-drug-price-fixing-collusion-idUSKBN1D0201 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-generics/u-s-states-a...