In the past year, there have been talks about Amazon going into the healthcare market. Jeff Bezos of Amazon has acquired the online pharmacy PillPack, as well as teamed up with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway. One of the goals in this is to create their own pharmacy where you can order your pills with your next Amazon Prime package. Amazon is also looking to incorporate the Alexa device to help with medical needs, such as reminding you what your blood sugar levels are, or re-ordering your prescription medication. It is possible that, with Amazon, you would not even need to leave your home to go to the doctor, test for medical issues or get medications.
The three companies' new joint venture, Haven, looks to disrupt the cost and difficulty that comes with healthcare, by cutting out the middlemen, the pharmacy-benefit manager, thus cutting down the pharmacy's take and standardizing prices for medicine. Although, prior authorization for medication could be done better. It is possible that Haven may even fund their own health insurance, if they get the right permits. It is still up in the air what Haven is going to do in the future, but there are many speculations.
The timeline of what Amazon has been doing in the past year tells an obvious story of what they are planning for with Haven.
Amazon possibly going into health insurance would definitely disrupt the heath insurance vertical, and should be something to keep an eye on. For one, Amazon has over 640,000 employees as of 2018, which is larger than the population of Vermont. They all would be covered by Amazon insurance right off the bat, and their families as well. Amazon also wants to make the entire industry more affordable; in turn, it would be safe to assume that their health insurance would be more affordable as well. Since there are so many regular Amazon users, what is stopping them from just using it for health insurance as well?
Amazon being a primary care provider is also something that could be here before you know it; they already have an open pilot care clinic for certain employees and plan to expand to more employees this year. If successful, it is very possible that Amazon would expand their primary care facilities for people who are not employees. They already have brick and mortar stores when they acquired Whole Foods, so having locations for their care facilities would not be difficult to launch.
Even if Amazon does nothing with healthcare, it is still something to keep an eye on. Being aware of what is going on in your industry is always important. boberdoo strives to stay in the loop with all things that could affect the lead generation industry. Check out our newsletter above to keep in the loop with everything we find.