So far, the comments here are seriously misunderstanding what Amazon is doing here, and are getting unnecessarily inflammatory just because it’s Big Bad Amazon.<p>It’s just a remote care benefit. My current employer offers it, administered by a vendor, and it’s separate from your actual insurance. You can call or video chat, send pictures, and even get prescriptions filled off-hours. It comes in handy for a lot of common quick scenarios.<p>The only news is that Amazon is big enough to self administer it.<p>It’s pretty much inevitable that companies of that immense size save money by self-administering or self-insuring many benefits like this.
Amazon employee here that used this service or it's immediate predecessor. It's just a branded third party teledoc service for internal employees.<p>I described very clearly that I needed a refill of a common non-scheduled medication. They took my credit card info and charged me $50, transferred me to the NP who immediately told me they could not prescribe it.<p>A waste of time and money. I went to the NP at the local CVS MinuteClinuc and had the bottle of pills in 30 minutes.
As somebody with complex health problems: These sort of telemedicine/urgent care arrangements, where one visits with a random nurse practitioner or doctor, without near complete access to your medical record and without proper follow up, can be disastrous.<p>I am not blaming Amazon for anything. I am pointing out that your health problems need to be followed up, with your general practitioner (GP), if you have to visit an urgent care, even if you are "healthy". In many cases, all you really need to do is have the urgent care medical records transferred to your GP--and confirm that the GP office got them.<p>Considering that the third leading cause of death in the US is preventable medical errors [1], complete and accurate health records are important. In fact, this was how I was properly diagnosed with a very rare disease. I am now in remission and I get a second chance to live my life.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/05/03/476636183/death-certificates-undercount-toll-of-medical-errors" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/05/03/4766361...</a>
White-labeling telemedicine benefits could be a novel retention play for companies, but I think that only works if:<p>a. the benefit is obviously superior (better care than you'd get from a PCP or national telemedicine brand like Teladoc)<p>and/or<p>b. the benefit is emulsified with covered perks like gym memberships, wellness programming, etc.<p>It's interesting that this is a story though. It's either a recruiting tactic or they're floating it as something they might sell outwardly later. It's also potentially a way to control coverage costs for employees.
I love that Amazon is moving in this direction.<p>Employer-provided health insurance is a total racket. I would love to see Medicare-for-all in the US, and support that. But we also need a plan B.<p>But how do you break a racket? You can’t just built a startup, because the market is fucked: everyone with money already gets care for free. Most of the people who need care are broke.<p>And there are so many layers of indirection: patient -> employer -> insurer -> provider.... that you’re not just dealing with a single racket, you have layers of protectorates that are milking people at every stage.<p>Plus there’s the scale issue, with a pool of 100 patient-customers, a few bad years can sink your startup. Yes you can buy specialty insurance, but it would need to be a very complex product and you need scale to make that appealing to an underwriter.<p>Which brings me to why I am excited about Amazon trying this:<p>A big employer seems like the only party other than the state who can break the racket.<p>Amazon is more or less bearing the full cost of their employees care, and they have the scale to act as their own insurer. They also have the software and data science teeth needed to build the backoffice.<p>Medicare for all is what we need, but I support Amazon because I believe in the diversity of tactics.
> Employees will have an option to see a health provider via a mobile app or website, and they can text a nurse on any health topic in minutes. If an employee needs follow-up care, Amazon Care can arrange for a nurse to pay a visit at home.<p>Have fun trying to get hold of an actual doctor. I understand that nurses are more than capable of handling lots of issues, but I doubt Amazon will publish a breakdown of the doctor:nurse ratio for this initiative.
The naming is horrible, because 'Amazon Care' is an oxymoron (sorry, couldn't help it).<p>This is crap. It's basically streamlined McMedicine. Any ailment which steps out of the ordinary will be deferred or ignored. This is vaporware. Its goal is to save Bezos money for employee health insurance and using it's gimmicks to advertise it as a 'benefit'<p>> Health care represents a $3.5 trillion sector for Amazon<p>This is the problem right here. As long as medical care is a business, it's gonna be run like a business and trust me, you don't want Amazon running anything medical for you.