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Amazon has approval from FTC to acquire One Medical primary-care clinics
- EarthIsHome 4y agohttps://archive.is/Sc50Z https://archive.is/Sc50Z
- X-Istence 4y agoHow do I get one medical to delete all data they have on me?
- ceejayoz 4y agoThat may be challenging. Most states have a retention period required by law. NY, for example: https://regs.health.ny.gov/content/section-40510-medical-records https://regs.health.ny.gov/content/section-40510-medical-rec... > Medical records shall be retained in their original or legally reproduced form for a period of at least six years from the date of discharge or three years after the patient's age of majority (18 years), whichever is longer, or at least six years after death.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jessriedel 4y agoHow do you get the 10 docs you've visited in the last decade to delete all the info they have on you? I'm not sure, but I'd bet on it being harder than with One Medical.
- subulaz 4y agotoo bad this country can't seem to leave essential services like health care in the hands of medical specialists instead of capitalists. no matter how Amazon tries to spin this one out, it's unlikely to end well: "By taking a large portion of healthy, well-educated patients who require less-complex care out of the usual primary care system, tech companies such as Amazon will leave primary care, a specialty essential to the future of health in the U.S. that is already on life support, even more desolate." https://www.statnews.com/2022/07/23/deal-between-amazon-and-one-medical-deal-has-massive-implications-for-the-future-of-primary-care/ https://www.statnews.com/2022/07/23/deal-between-amazon-and-...
- lr4444lr 4y agoLast I read, PCPs were in incredibly short supply in the US. If urgent care can reduce unnecessary strain on their thin ranks, so much the better.
- nostrebored 4y agoYes, PCPs are in short supply. Much of this is artificial due to the limits accrediting organizations have placed on the number of new doctors per year.
- Loughla 4y agoI mean, that, and their earning power is substantially lower than specialists. There is lower incentive to go into primary care, outside of passion. And, as we know, if you have a passion for something, you deserve to get paid less for it. That is sarcasm.
- ekele 4y agoThis statistic is a bit misleading because NPs and PAs are basically replacing PCPs.
- voakbasda 4y agoThis is a farce in its own right. I was referred to a “dermatologist” recently that turned out to be a PA with a background in nutrition. She had virtually no experience with actual dermatology. I was forced to wait over an hour after my appointment was set to begin, and my insurance was billed $500 for a 15-minute visit. She did not improve my situation one iota, so that was a complete waste of time and money. Our health system is failing spectacularly at every level.
- ejb999 4y agothe overwhelming amount of things that patients come into a dr's office with do not required an actual MD to diagnose and treat - NP's and PA's do just fine in most cases. Heck, even regular nurses with a few years experience could probably look at your sore throat, check your blood sugars and adjust your meds. Everybody thinks whatever they have wrong with them is something unique and special that requires a full blown MD - usually it is not. If I need a transplant, I am going to want a full blown MD to do it - for most run of the mill things, I am happy to see a NP or PA.
- footlose_3815 4y agoNothing good for the public will come of this
- mouse_ 4y agoIf our society and bureaucratic process has let the Amazon situation get this bad, what makes anyone think it's not simply going to continue to get worse at the same (logarithmic) pace? The oligarchs aren't going to do anything they're not forced to, and right now, they're the ones forcing the hand of the system.
- woodruffw 4y agoAs a One Medical customer, this makes me very unhappy: even if internal controls protect my data from the rest of Amazon’s business, I struggle to believe that their interests are aligned with mine.
- nostrebored 4y agoCould I ask why?
- forevergreenyon 4y agoI'll venture a guess: For the human individual person, the interests (the goal) is to care for their health; but amazon is a corporation: for them the real goal is profit, not health. I'm saying that for the human the incentives should be all about health. the money, the costs are the "obstacle". On the other hand, for the corporation the incentives are the profit. The health is a cost (or "obstacle"). with this 'frame' in mind I'm saying the incentives are not aligned on their own because the priorities are in conflict. What's truly the problem here, is how healthy patients aren't 'good' customers of health-services. Then again, this is not a problem unique to Amazon, but they're getting into this 'rodeo'.
- thunky 4y agoI hate to break it to you, but health care is already a for-profit industry.
- hourago 4y agoAmazon philosophy of growth and medical care are totally incompatible. This is one of the reasons that capital profits should be taxes way higher. Letting one company accumulate such power in such a short period of time makes society unstable. I hope the best to the American citizens that will suffer thru this situation.
- theGnuMe 4y agoI think Amazon is tired of paying a small fortune in healthcare costs which have to be renegotiated every few years and administered by some moronic organization like Cigna. Maybe they can do better? Fee for service is kind of insane. Urgent care strep throat $250 + meds makes no sense. It should be $50 total or less.
- ceejayoz 4y agoOne Medical doesn't replace health insurance; you still need coverage for ER, hospitalization, prescriptions, etc. You won't get a discount on all that for having a One Medical subscription, either.
- bbarn 4y agoI spent a good portion of my career in the insurance space, and got to the point I just won't work in that industry anymore. Not only because I think benefits coordination companies like you mention are awful, but also because of the sheer amount of bloat I've seen in that industry. Most major cities have literal towers of offices just filled with insurance workers, many of whom do almost nothing for their salary. I personally know one developer at a large one that hasn't talked to his manager in months, and hasn't done any coding at work for almost as long because he has no tasks to complete, and was told "we're waiting on this project to be approved". He collects a paycheck and doesn't even go into the office. He is one of ten on his team. I think Insurance and banking may be the last of the big corporations you can still get lost in. So yeah, maybe Amazon can do better at least on the administration side.
- htag 4y agoIn what world should strep throat cost less than $50. 1. You interact with a receptionist. They use commercial software to track your visit, find an appropriate medical professional for your condition, and fit you into a schedule/queue. 2. You see a medical professional, often a nurse, that checks your vitals and updates your chart. This professional will often take a swab of the infected area. 3. The swab is sent to a lab, where medical grade equipment and a trained technician analysis the sample. 4. You see a medical professional with the prescription pad. Usually an MD or NP. They are responsible for the diagnosis. Strep infection could be a symptom of a larger problem. People without a bacterial infection need to be treated, but shouldn't be given antibiotics. This professional needs to carefully listen to the patient and clearly explain their condition, and what to expect from treatment. 5. You see clerk at checkout. Your entire bill is reviewed by your insurance company. 6. You see a pharmacy tech, a pharmacist oversees your prescription being filled, a medical grade product is provided. Lots of liability at this step. Lots of security and shrinkage concerns for the business. Keep in mind that throughout this entire process staff is held to higher education, background, and training standards than the general population, all software is built for HIPPA and costs more than standard enterprise software, all equipment is built to a very high standard, all offices are more sanitary than average businesses, and many of the trades are seeing long term labor shortages. Throughout the process you'll probably take an hour of professional time.
- mikece 4y agoIs there any industry that Amazon doesn't want to enter and dominate?
- AndrewKemendo 4y agoA book store is now the hospital. When margin seeking is the goal, everything is up for grabs. Mike Judge literally wrote this story as a warning and we're just making sure it happens. "Welcome to AmazonGo we love you"
- bbarn 4y agoThere's a scene in the hospital in that movie where a roomba-like machine is just moving back and forth saying "your floor is now clean". Broken tech devices has become something I constantly see now. We have all this junk and 4-5 year old IoT toys not working, fridges with blank screens that no one cares about.. and it keeps getting worse. That and, my experience at the doctor now feels quite similar. "Says here you're retarded"
- fallingknife 4y agoEven Google Maps has gotten almost unusably buggy over the last couple years.
- bbarn 4y agoThere's a dirt road connecting two neighborhoods in my area that google thinks is the most direct way to get across town. Unless you have a true off road 4x4 with a lifted suspension capable of climbing a 15% grade, you're going to have a bad day going in reverse when you realize it's not a real road. It's gotten so bad that there is an actual sign that says "GPS IS WRONG THIS IS NOT THE WAY" at the end of the last paved part.
- superb-owl 4y agoWhen did Amazon become a private equity firm?
- ryanianian 4y agoThere’s an interesting rabbit hole in this snark. Something like public equity eating private equity’s lunch? Please expand.
- htag 4y agoAmazon over private equity is simple. 1. The numbers on Amazon's quarterly reports are huge. They are playing in the big leagues. 2. Everyone with money remembers when they were just a book store and the dotcom bubble burst. The narrative that they can go into a market and dominate it in a few years is a strong one everyone has a lot of belief in. 3. They are one of the leaders in using technology to upgrade traditional business lines. Every industry still experiences Fear of Missing Out on the latest technology change. Imagine how great of a position Sears Catalog would have been in if they could have held their strength for another five or ten years. They had brand name recognition, supplier relationships, warehousing, distribution, and physical locations for returns. 4. When a tech company enters a market there is a higher level of risk accepted than private equity. The private equity firms usually pick more sure bets than this.
- moneywoes 4y agoSurprised this got past Lina Khan
- airstrike 4y agoShe can't make up new laws
- IncandescentGas 4y agoWould an Amazon owned clinic responding to an injured warehouse worker not be incentivized to protect the parent company instead of treat the patient?
- ROTMetro 4y agoPretty sure Amazon already lost court cases where their onsite 'medical' has done this.
- yeahbutiguess 4y agoWhat a truly devastating outcome. Amazon has no idea how to run healthcare, and they will apply their "squeeze the customer, squeeze the provider" ethos to it. I'm so sorry for all the employees and patients at one medical.
- robg 4y agoIf this makes telehealth easier to use and more widely adopted, sign me up. One click appointments should be the default for many medical needs.
- oneepic 4y agoI noticed One Medical is actually already a publicly traded company under ONEM. I'd think this is quite a bit different, than if Amazon bought a nonprofit hospital/health system like Sutter Health, or Allegheny Health Network, or even the clinic across your street that you naturally assume is a nonprofit.
- xen2xen1 4y agoGoogle's health care will be provided by Amazon? Nifty
- crazygringo 4y agoYeah that's definitely the funniest part to me. Honestly would have expected Google to buy it before Amazon, halfway just for that reason.
- bmitc 4y agoWhy? I'm pretty sick of this stuff. As if a multi-conglomerate will have no want to abuse the access to new data and push medical access in directions it shouldn't be going. Amazon just bought iRobot. So now they have microphones and cameras in your home, they know what you eat, buy, and watch, and now they get your medical information. I honestly don't have any hopes anymore. The U.S.'s democratic process and regulation entities are corporate captured. We're owned and controlled by institutional corporate shareholders.
- robertlagrant 4y ago> We're owned and controlled by institutional corporate shareholders. Government is still in charge. It just chooses to be captured, even though its first job - which it gets paid for by extracting money by force - is to not be captured.
- flandish 4y agoAre you saying that a captured government is still in charge? That’s … not how capture works.
- robertlagrant 4y ago> Are you saying that a captured government is still in charge? I'm saying that people in government has to decide to be captured, when it extracts free money from its populace with the promise that it will remain impartial. > That’s … not how capture works. This is never a useful thing to say in terms of furthering the conversation. I appreciate it may have felt good, though.
- flandish 4y agoIt felt like I as having to explain things to someone who was being thick for the simple purpose of being thick. Corporations have purchased our government and therefore the government is, in my opinion, not in charge. Sure they enact violence as all nation states do- often on behalf of those corporations. Neither of those two actors are good for the people, for the working class.
- brutuscat 4y agoThis was idea of Todd Combs, an investing manager of Berkshire Hathaway. It failed before (Buffet BRK, Dimon JPM & Bezos AMZN venture called Haven went bust a while ago), but I think Bezos just keeps trying... https://archive.is/nU8j2 https://archive.is/nU8j2
- sklargh 4y agoWhole Foods and OneMedical represent a strategy of locking up wealthy households into the broader Amazon ecosystem. It’s iMessage, but for your bad knee. Buying Whole Foods was a way to buy a freezer and small warehouse with the grocery budget of the top ~3% of US Households attached. OneMedical is a way to do the same. I expect they’ll try to roll up Summit or another group next.
- danpalmer 4y ago> ...represent a strategy of locking up wealthy households into the broader Amazon ecosystem. I find this an odd but interesting approach, because I associate Amazon as being a bargain, low quality sort of brand. It's a good service, but it's definitely not premium. In some cases I'd say it borders on tacky and tasteless. This is not just about the product catalog too, it's site/app quality, Fire and Alexa devices, selling ads on Kindle lock screens, being completely shameless about service quality issues, AWS shipping services 2 years before they're actually any good, and so on. Whole Foods probably isn't like this yet, although I haven't been in since pre-acquisition because there are only a few in the UK, and I don't know anything about OneMedical, but if Amazon's brand permeates into these, either visibly or invisibly, I can't imagine it going well.
- LatteLazy 4y agoAmazon have basically outperformed every other company out there by doing basic logistics and simple useability. I think that would add a lot to healthcare especially in the US.
- gdurham 4y agoI mentioned this in another thread…I’m waiting for this to become the “company town” of tech. Employees make money, forced to spend it at the company store. Is Amazon in housing yet?