Amazon To Buy Primary Health Care Provider One Medical for Roughly $3.9 Billion (cnbc.com) 59
Amazon is acquiring One Medical for $18 a share, an all-cash deal that values the primary health care provider at roughly $3.9 billion, the companies said Thursday. From a report: The deal deepens Amazon's presence in health care, which Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said is "high on the list of experiences that need reinvention."
The e-commerce giant hopes to improve how people book appointments and the experience of being seen by a physician, Lindsay said in a statement. "We love inventing to make what should be easy easier and we want to be one of the companies that helps dramatically improve the healthcare experience over the next several years," he said.
The e-commerce giant hopes to improve how people book appointments and the experience of being seen by a physician, Lindsay said in a statement. "We love inventing to make what should be easy easier and we want to be one of the companies that helps dramatically improve the healthcare experience over the next several years," he said.
Amazon Primary! (Score:5, Funny)
Alexa, I think I'm dying.
I'm sorry to hear that. Would you like to transfer your prime subscription to a family member's credit card?
Amazon Prime-ary! (Score:2)
Alexa, I think I'm dying.
I'm sorry to hear that. We can give you an appointment with your doctor in 2 days free with Amazon Primary, or choose No Rush medical service appointment in five days and receive $2 Kindle Credit.
Re:Amazon Primary! (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, if Jeff Bezos manages doctors like he manages warehouse workers, it will be the DOCTORS providing the pee samples in between their 2 minute appointment time limits.
What. Could. Go. Wrong?
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Seriously, if Jeff Bezos manages doctors like he manages warehouse workers, it will be the DOCTORS providing the pee samples in between their 2 minute appointment time limits. What. Could. Go. Wrong?
At worst they would treat the help staff at the service counters that way. Nurses and doctors are closer analogies to Amazon's IT staff and developers, who are treated much better than warehouse workers.
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Doctors/nurses are similar to IT staff and developers in that they're "skilled workers", but they're similar to Amazon's warehouse workers in that their productivity is directly tied to how many units of work they complete, if that makes sense. In the same way you might judge a warehouse worker by how many items they pick off a shelf in an 8 hour shift, you might judge a doctor by how many appointments they get through in their 8 hour shift. No one (sane) is going to go after a developer for not writing en
Mixed Feelings (Score:3)
On the one hand, I'm happy that a company with a strong track records of providing easy to use services that customers want at affordable prices enters the health care industry. I'm less happy when a company with arguably the worst customer service known to man enters the health care industry. And I'm not sure our government is up to the task of enforcing HIPAA compliance on behemoths like Amazon effectively, although arguably the larger a single company is the easier it would be for the government to target investigations at them.
Either way, we need as many companies as possible combating health care prices. So I would lean towards this being a good thing overall.
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Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:5, Funny)
Amazon troll bot, awesome.
Yeah, we created this Slashdot account back in 1998 and jumped on this opportunity to start using it for its intended purpose. You caught us.
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I'm less happy when a company with arguably the worst customer service known to man enters the health care industry
Interesting.. I really can't think of Health Insurance Carrier, or larger medical provide who has offered customer service anywhere near as good as Amazon. I would much rather deal with Amazon CS.
If you start chatting with the Amazon rep they have access to all the information required, and generally are able to execute. By comparison if you call BCBS you MIGHT have success if you have done all your homework before pickup up the phone, got every group,member,invoice,provider, etc number right in front of y
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Even their tech support is pretty good. I've actually managed to get real bug tickets opened via the help desk and actual problems solved which is very rare for dealing with a consumer device company.
I don't return much but when I have, they've refunded my credit card as soon as I've dropped the item off at UPS.
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Interesting.
While there are plenty of negative things to say about Amazon, my anecdotal evidence shows no complaints on their customer service...
Whenever I've had problems, they've been prompt and helped me return or replace what I didn't like.
I usually go through on chat and that way help bypass the thick accents the help often has, that I have a great difficulty understanding over the ph
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This statement tells me two things: first, you have no idea that AWS already has HIPAA-certified services, and second, you have no idea what is required for HIPAA compliance and what the resultant penalties are in case of non-compliance.
This make anybody else queasy? (Score:5, Insightful)
The big tech companies getting so heavily involved in healthcare gives me all sorts of heebee jeebees. I mean, let's not even talk about the control and manipulation potentials, of which there are many, but the very essence of what these moves mean is frightening on a very fundamental level.
For healthcare to appeal to this massive tech giants, there has to be an incentive. And what incentive does it take to interest these behemoths? $$$$ PROFIT $$$$.
Now, us in the states, we know that all anybody involved in the healthcare industry has cared about for decades in maximizing profits. From the insurance industry all the way through the mess that is hospital and clinic management, it's all about driving that profit margin. That's squicky enough. Then you add in that these huge, profit driven corporations are seeing enough dollar signs within the sector to want a piece? And you know damn good and well that these are not altruistic motivated entities, hoping to help humanity and human beings maximize their life expectancy and how good they feel for the entirety of their life expectancy. No, they'll collect data, run that data through all the algorithms they can possibly think will give them "positive" results, then manipulate healthcare to draw even MORE profit from people desperately stupid enough to think handing more of their lives, in this case the actual essence of life and health itself, over to big data collection companies is going to somehow help them.
For fuck's sake, why would anyone think this is a good idea? It's conceptually the type of shit writers rooms would have shot down thirty years ago as scare mongering bullshit not worth trifling with even if the attempted project was a dystopian nightmare future. Now, we're not just living it, we're watching large numbers of people clamor for it and declare it a godsend.
What a nightmare scenario we're living through. And it just keeps getting worse.
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The big tech companies getting so heavily involved in healthcare gives me all sorts of heebee jeebees. I mean, let's not even talk about the control and manipulation potentials, of which there are many, but the very essence of what these moves mean is frightening on a very fundamental level.
For healthcare to appeal to this massive tech giants, there has to be an incentive. And what incentive does it take to interest these behemoths? $$$$ PROFIT $$$$.
Now, us in the states, we know that all anybody involved in the healthcare industry has cared about for decades in maximizing profits. From the insurance industry all the way through the mess that is hospital and clinic management, it's all about driving that profit margin. That's squicky enough. Then you add in that these huge, profit driven corporations are seeing enough dollar signs within the sector to want a piece? And you know damn good and well that these are not altruistic motivated entities, hoping to help humanity and human beings maximize their life expectancy and how good they feel for the entirety of their life expectancy. No, they'll collect data, run that data through all the algorithms they can possibly think will give them "positive" results, then manipulate healthcare to draw even MORE profit from people desperately stupid enough to think handing more of their lives, in this case the actual essence of life and health itself, over to big data collection companies is going to somehow help them.
For fuck's sake, why would anyone think this is a good idea? It's conceptually the type of shit writers rooms would have shot down thirty years ago as scare mongering bullshit not worth trifling with even if the attempted project was a dystopian nightmare future. Now, we're not just living it, we're watching large numbers of people clamor for it and declare it a godsend.
What a nightmare scenario we're living through. And it just keeps getting worse.
Uh-huh. And what exactly is it that motivates YOU to go to work every day? Altruism? Or, uhh... "$$$$ PROFIT $$$$" [sic]? What do you think motivates your doctor?
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There's a huge difference between someone making a profit from their work (doctor makes a salary) and the idea that the driving force behind the entire healthcare industry should be driven by profit taking as its motivating factor.
Conflating the two is at best a bit silly and a worst plainly dishonest.
Doctors are a well respected and well paid profession in every country under every type of healthcare system.
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Well, usually doctors are their own business entities....
They bill the hospitals for their time while there, but they hang their shingle out for a private business and live off the fees their clinics charge (profit after paying staff and expenses).
I've never heard of a doctor being a regular W2 salaried employee somewhere...well, except maybe if they work for the govt. like for the VA or something.
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According to the AMA its about 50/50;
Employed physicians were 50.2% of all patient care physicians in 2020, up from 47.4% in 2018 and 41.8% in 2012. In contrast, self-employed physicians were 44% of all patient care physicians in 2020, down from 45.9% in 2018 and 53.2% in 2012. The percentage of physicians who were independent contractors has been steady, fluctuating in the narrow band between 5% (2012) and 6.7% (2018).
AMA analysis shows most physicians work outside of private practice [ama-assn.org]
In any case it's not r
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A doctor provides a service and charges a fee.
A merchant buys widgets at a low price and sells them at a higher prices; makes a profit.
I don’t think there’s a problem with the former, within reason. The latter case is less noble, perhaps, but if it’s providing a service (importing goods from overseas, say) it’s still a win-win for both side# of the trade.
However, it’s easier to screw people on the way to making a profit than it is to charging an overblown fee for a service. Th
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Uh-huh. And what exactly is it that motivates YOU to go to work every day? Altruism? Or, uhh... "$$$$ PROFIT $$$$" [sic]? What do you think motivates your doctor?
There's a HUGE difference between paying the individual *actually providing me care* and having to pay a bunch of extra money to maximize shareholder profit, which is pure waste from a patient's perspective.
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For healthcare to appeal to this massive tech giants, there has to be an incentive. And what incentive does it take to interest these behemoths? $$$$ PROFIT $$$$.
But the way they tend to make that profit is by finding a way to provide a service for free (to the end user) and by massively reducing the overall price because of improved scale and digitization. I'm fine with Amazon making a $100 billion in profit if it squeezes overall profit in the industry down by $200 billion. That is still a massive savings for the consumer.
The downside is if this drive for profit ends up reducing the level of care, which is a real concern. But the drive for profit itself is not a n
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The health providers are already being ripped off like banshees by heir health IT providers, who in turn provide absolute shit software that is not even interoperable.. You can take that up with Obama, who got a law passed requiring it.
Companies like Amazon could cut the price of the health software being sold to providers by 90% and still be rolling in cash.
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If you think IT is the main money bleeder in healthcare in the US, I suggest you look into insurance company profit margins. Why those fucks need to make record profits every years while claiming they can't cover people without raising rates astronomically year-over-year is utterly beyond me.
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"The big tech companies getting so heavily involved in healthcare"
Healthcare companies were already big tech companies, just one's whose names you don't know.
Reinvention? (Score:4, Informative)
How about lowering costs or providing universal coverage like every other civilized country? My job pays well but has a shit policy of a $10,000 deductible. I'll never hit that unless something majorly bad happens. In that case it's probably more cost effective to go without insurance and in the event of a massive bill just declare bankruptcy.
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Can't happen because:
A) Communism (BOO!)
B) Socialism (Which is fine for roads, but god forbid a poor person be able to get health services)
C) Something something small countries not the same something
D) Charts and graphs showing how the United States is completely and utterly different from literally every other country in the civilized world
E) I got mine, fuck you
The United States runs on fear. And when it comes to healthcare, our biggest fear seems to be the fear that the "undesirable" may get the sa
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our biggest fear seems to be the fear that the "undesirable" may get the same medical treatment as anyone else
Almost no one thinks of it that way. Their fear is that providing a better level of care to "undesirables" (the poor) will either massively increase the cost of care for themselves or reduce their overall level of care because the industry is now subsidizing the care of undesirables.
If aliens came down and offered quality healthcare to the poor for free, no one would resist it just because they don't like the poor. They would only resist it if the aliens were taking resources from everyone else to offer thi
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It's more the "in group" deserves everything because God, and the "out group" deserves nothing because they are sub-human animals. Somehow, it all revolves around net worth too. We've really turned the whole money as religion thing into a societal flag-post.
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The U.S. has its share of Prosperity Preachers. If you aren't rich, then you must not love Jesus enough. Therefore it is your fault you are not rich. And if you are not rich, please contribute to our ministry and, while we cannot promise you will become rich, we will promise that we will become rich.
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Sure, but that's not something Amazon can do.
Though I suppose Bezos could be lobbying for UHC if he wanted to.
Prime Ambulance (Score:3)
Please, Big Tech - disrupt health care! (Score:2)
Imagine if beside every tribal casino there was an Amazon-run pharmacy that could offer low free-market prescription fills by buying in bulk on the international market, just as Canada does. In places where monopolies enforced by state medical boards cement in overpricing or where the abortion Taliban have restricted women's treatment options, we might see doctor offices, clinics and eventually entire hospitals.
I can dream, can't I?
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There is. The Casino is the stock market, and the pharmacy is run by Mark Cuban
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Generics are inherently going to be cheaper than brand drugs, but for those of us who could benefit by the latest, being able to make bulk purchases on the international market is exactly how Canada and other such countries achieve their lower prices. There is no such thing as price controls on the global market. Canada just bids on deals for medications in bulk and passes the savings through to its patients. Where no such savings can be negotiated, Canadians just can't get that drug.
15 years ahead of its time (Score:2)
Actually, this was expected for 2037 [fandom.com].
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Actually, this was expected for 2037.
It's only a couple years late for Cyberpunk 2020. But where are my AV-4 ambulances?
"high on the list of resource extraction" (Score:1)
Extremely angry Yelp reviews in my area. (Score:1)
Healthcare styled after tech support (Score:3)
The One Medical offices can look nice, but hardly any of their staff are actual doctors (the rest are various firms of practitioners). I tried getting a physical and the guy basically just read off a series of questions on his computer, basically like tech support going through a script. The only actual check he did was blood pressure. My One Medical membership is free via work and I canâ(TM)t see paying extra for getting lipstick on a pig.
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The real question you have to ask yourself is does a doctor do anything different? There is what a doctor CAN DO. Yet, there is a reality of what a doctor DOES DO.
I'm in Canada and in my experience general practice doesn't seem like it needs a doctor. You spend maybe 10 minutes with the doctor. It's very much and in and out system. If you answer their questions, you might get sent for a test or a prescription. Yet, it does seem ripe for an actual script, because that is what they tend to be doing anyways.
In
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Oh great - I hope the doctors wash their hands... (Score:2)
...after peeing in a bottle.
What is this really? (Score:3)
What exactly does One Medical do? Seems to me that the insurance bidness needs to be disrupted again after the last cock-up. The individual health insurance market is totally broken and no, universal healthcare isn't the answer. How do I know this? Because I've been a customer/participant in the individual market for 25 years now. When I started in the 90s, I had decent coverage; a standard 80/20 plan from Blue Cross in California. It didn't cost very much, maybe around 10% of what I was paying in rent. When I moved out of state, I switched to a new company. Again, the cost was reasonable and actually better than Blue Cross locally. (I never understood why health insurance differed from state to state). Same coverage or better. After 2009, that company closed their doors and sold their customers to United Healthcare. From that point on, the premiums went up between 15 and 30% every year like clockwork. It's now so expensive that I simply can't afford it. The cost is now my single biggest expense. The plan was a 100/0 with a $2500 deductible and no maximum payout and it never expired. Earlier this year, I had to raise the deductible to $5000 because it was too expensive. That only lasted a few months when they jacked up the rate 25%. Now I have no choice but to sh*tcan the plan entirely. However, what's available isn't very good. United Healthcare is the only company that offers a multi-year plan. They're also the only company that offers a 100/0 plan. But a) that has a $1 million maximum payout and b) in three years, you have to start all over again. Even healthcare.gov doesn't offer that. Their plans are garbage. Now, before you say "universal healthcare will fix that" consider this, young millenial: Medicare is essentially universal healthcare for seniors but most seniors have to buy some sort of supplemental insurance and that isn't cheap. They often have to pay for things that Medicare doesn't cover and even if they did, you have to wait months to get an appointment with a specialist who might be able to give Medicare the diagnosis you need and even then Medicare probably won't pay the full price. Point is that what I had before wasn't universal healthcare and it worked just fine and seniors have it and it sure as hell isn't "universal".
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Re: What is this really? (Score:1)
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You need to resist the programming, fight against the brainwashing.
Universal Health Care would solve every single one of your complaints. And more.
You see, there's one thing that you Yanks really need to understand - taxes can pay for actually useful things if you don't waste all the money on corporate welfare and bombing brown and black kids in the Middle East and Africa and South America.
Take Australia, for example. We don't waste nearly as much as you on corporate welfare and do hardly any foreign child-