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Amazon Pharmacy
- jryan49 2y agoDon't think I would trust amazon with my drugs after all the mixed inventory business...
- oblio 2y agoI'm curious if this stuff: A) makes it inside the US B) scales outside of it My gut reaction is A) maybe, B) hell no.
- frankdenbow 2y agoThis is from their PillPack acquisition?
- techtalsky 2y agoProbably not. PillPack is MDP: multi-dose packaging, which is little packets containing multiple medications. All they're advertising here is regular bottled medications, which is a much easier-to-solve mail-order prescription problem.
- spdustin 2y agoNone of these services has scheduled meds, so ADHD folks, keep going to your local pharmacy.
- adolph 2y agoLocal pharmacy is out on the regular too. As I understand it, there was some sort of DEA thing that is wreaking supply chain havoc.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoManufacturing capacity has not kept up with demand, but the shortage situation is close to passing. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/adhd-drug-shortages-fda-easing-affecting-patients-rcna152570 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/adhd-drug-shortag...
- flir 2y agoMaybe. But... a few drugs disappeared for several months in Europe. I'd expect an increase in diagnoses to result in an intermittent supply, not zero supply. As shortages hit the US and Europe at roughly the same time, I'm wondering if it was supply chain issues - maybe a precursor chemical all manufacturers source from the same supplier? (Writing this in the hope that someone with more knowledge than me chimes in).
- internet101010 2y agoIt's gotten a lot better (for me at least) in the last six months. For about a year and a half I had to call around checking inventory before calling my doctor. It made me feel like a junkie and I hated it. In an ideal world there would be some sort of middleman connected to pharmacies, you have a preferred list of locations, the script automatically gets sent to the one with inventory, and you get notified which pharmacy to go to. Unfortunately no pharmacy would ever opt into this because it would mean risk of losing business. However, if the big pharmacies just offered this feature for their own locations I would definitely always send my script to them.
- Scoundreller 2y ago> For about a year and a half I had to call around checking inventory before calling my doctor. The other improvement here is that the DEA started allowing pharmacies to transfer patient prescriptions for controlled substances, so you don’t need to call your doctor and hope they send it out to the location with inventory quickly enough. But only once, to keep life arbitrarily difficult. Gotta make life easier through more rules, never fewer! https://www.dea.gov/stories/2023/2023-09/2023-09-01/revised-regulation-allows-dea-registered-pharmacies-transfer https://www.dea.gov/stories/2023/2023-09/2023-09-01/revised-... The DEA still has some restrictions on moving inventory between pharmacies, which can still prevent pharmacies from balancing supply and demand in a way that’s transparent to end-users.
- fridder 2y agoI kinda like the idea but unless something changes around Schedule II drug rules, you can't completely replace in person pharmacies.
- sybercecurity 2y agoAgreed, but I think their first target are people with reoccurring prescriptions: diabetes, seniors, etc. Leveraging their subscription management knowledge to make it appear easy and dependable (I guess we'll see on that bit).
- fwip 2y agoNot to nitpick, but several schedule 2 drugs are recurring prescriptions. My ADHD isn't going to go away just because the pharmacy doesn't want to fill it. And, in a fun bit of irony, being unmedicated makes it a lot harder to jump through the necessary hoops to get a refill.
- aynyc 2y agoWho’s their target market? Just one off prescription?
- _JamesA_ 2y agoI've been using them for a little over a year for a daily medication. The price is less than half what the local pharmacies are charging - and that's without insurance.
- MarkMarine 2y agoUsed it today to get a difficult to find med. My experience prior has been calling around to some surly pharmacy staff who seem super annoyed that I would even call rather than wait 45 min in line to find out the med is out of stock. This market is ripe for disruption and I’m glad Amazon is replacing this horrible customer experience. Not like they are pushing out Mom and Pop pharmacies, that happened already, so there isn’t really a sympathetic actor in this fight.
- PKop 2y agoI wonder if they're as bad at preventing knock-off drug supply from polluting their inventory as they are with retail products. I can't think of a product line I'd feel less comfortable buying from Amazon than pharmaceuticals.
- Wingman4l7 2y agoMy first thought as well. I'm guessing they're less likely to accept the liability of poisoning people from co-mingled third-party counterfeits if they're delivering FDA-approved drugs instead of unapproved supplements.
- 2024throwaway 2y agoI seriously don’t understand how the above comment is being downvoted. It’s a very serious concern with some real history to back it up.
- PKop 2y agoI'm sure it will be fine.. https://thechinaproject.com/2021/03/16/chinese-pharmas-big-problem-counterfeits-fakes-quality-issues/ https://thechinaproject.com/2021/03/16/chinese-pharmas-big-p...
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- kbos87 2y agoStarted using this about a month ago out of frustration with the consistently poor experience I was having with another mail order pharmacy. When you take a medication daily you want it to take as little mental bandwidth as possible. Having to call an 800 number every month or two to verify some inane details at the request of my old pharmacy was enough to get me to look for an alternative. So far this is exactly the kind of experience I’d expect and want… zero drama, all online management, extremely quick delivery.
- complianceowl 2y agoNext stop: Amazon Dispensary.
- sashk 2y agobeen using them for awhile, most annoying part, is that if your doctor doesn't do electronic prescriptions, because it is hard for them to setup, the fallback is to fax and is very very slow processing.
- bozzzy 2y agoOur local Walgreens is so terribly slow that I switched over to Amazon. It's about a million times more convenient. Auto-refill notifications, no waiting in line.
- skyyler 2y agoYou registered an account here just to support this ad campaign for this product? Why does that feel suspicious to me?
- PKop 2y agoWhy was shilling for Amazon your first comment on Hacker News?
- skyyler 2y agoDid you get a bunch of downvotes too? It feels like the marketing firm operating the account we replied to is upset with us :(
- _6hmp 2y agoMy doctor accidentally wrote a prescription for a three month supply of a medication for an acute illness that is generally not prescribed and certainly not filled for more than a month of quantity at a time, and generally not for more than 10 days. When I placed my order, I thought the price was high, but figured it was because I hadn't hit my deductible and it was an expensive medicine. There was no obvious indication on the UI about the quantity of the prescription, just the price. Amazon pharmacy accordingly sent me almost a small pharmacy-worth of this medicine. I called them and asked why the pharmacist didn't notice that this was a _highly_ unusual quantity of this medication (The quantity was *EIGHT* retail packages of the medicine) and raise a flag and check with the provider or me. The pharmacist I spoke to told me that they personally would have done so in this circumstance and told me they would refund the order and provide feedback to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. I later got an automated email that the refund request by the pharmacist was rejected by their finance department and could not be appealed. I won't be using Amazon pharmacy again.
- oblio 2y ago- Boss, can I pull "Warn about the unusually large order" task in the sprint? - Sure, Sam, right after you deliver the Prime Video integration.
- efitz 2y agoI’ve been using PillPack since before they were acquired by Amazon Pharmacy, and love them. If you have several prescriptions and especially if you have to take different medicines at different times of the day, you can save a lot of time and effort with PillPack. They package all of your daily meds into small packets labeled with the medication‘s and the time that you need to take them. They come in a big role and you just tear off the packets for the current day. You can also tear off several days if you are going on a trip, and you don’t have to bring a bunch of bottles or pill sorters. Personally, I have found them to be reasonably priced and very convenient and they have quickly resolved any issues that I have had.
- mikebonnell 2y agoSwitched to CostPlus pharmacy and haven't looked back, cheaper and easier than Amazon.
- schmookeeg 2y agoI already won't use Amazon for things I put in my body -- the product commingling and counterfeit situations make them a non-starter for me on this. Precision and control are just not in their company DNA, so I don't want their shipped products mucking with my DNA. :) Apple would be far higher on my list of consideration than this. I'd even say Google, for the 2 or 3 years that the product lasted. While I do find healthcare somewhat plodding and archaic, these anecdotes remind me that it's not always a bad thing.
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- ck2 2y agoEverything with Amazon seems good until something goes sideways and then you are trapped in their nightmare of customer service. If you have too many screwed up deliveries from Amazon you are suddenly, silently grey listed by them and now you cannot ever talk to a human being, they will only send you forms to fill out, by hand, and then wait a week or two for reply. I spent a month arguing with them that they totally screwed up a delivery by giving it to an unknown apartment at an unknown location because their own photo showed a completely different door and doormat than the 100+ previous deliveries. They insisted it was geofenced and impossible to mis-deliver, lol. I cannot imagine what a nightmare people are going to have after a medication delivery is so royally screwed up and given to someone else. Other online services to consider: https://costplusdrugs.com/medications https://costplusdrugs.com/medications https://walmart.com/pharmacy https://walmart.com/pharmacy https://www.singlecare.com/ https://www.singlecare.com/ https://www.goodrx.com/ https://www.goodrx.com/