Amazon has closed its deal, its acquisition of primary health provider,
One Medical after the Federal Trade Commission indicated that
they would not fight them on closing that deal.
Now this acquisition is just one sign of where the health industry is headed,
you should be concerned about your personal data.
You should be concerned about companies like Amazon monopolizing things.
We'll get to that argument in just a second, but first, the details.
The landmark $3.9 billion deal will turn the e-commerce giant into a provider
of primary medical care with access to more than 200 brick-and-mortar
doctors' offices, along with roughly 815,000 One Medical members.
According to the company's latest financial statement.
Now, Amazon signaled a greater interest in the health-care space when it
purchased PillPack in 2018 for $750 million,
using the acquisition to launch its own online pharmacy years later.
The company has also ramped up its telehealth service called,
Amazon Care, and it has sought to develop-at home medical diagnostics.
Now, what exactly does this mean?
I should note that in the near future, it doesn't mean much.
So, One health or what's the name of the company again?
Yeah, One Medical, One Medical has been around,
they already have hundreds of thousands of members who have signed up for
their company and the service they provide.
What they're saying is, they're going to offer a $55 discount for
a one year membership, currently cost about $144 to be a member of One Medical.
But there are some real issues at play here.
So, I direct you to a senior policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties
project who says, allowing Amazon to control the health care data for
another 700,000 + individuals is terrifying.
Why would that be?
Well Krista Brown continues and says, acquiring One Medical will entrench
Amazon's growing presence in the health care industry, undermining competition.
It will also pose serious risks to patients whose sensitive data will
be captured by a firm whose own Chief Information Security Office
once described access to consumer or customer data as a free for all.
And data is very profitable.
I mean think about it, if Amazon has access to your health
related data because of this acquisition,
they can certainly market a lot of product to you.
And I mean look, are these concerns unfounded?
Are we hyperventilating about this?
How should we really feel about it?
Well, the current patients enrolled with One Medical are concerned
themselves about the potential data sharing here.
So, why don't we watch this video that kind of delves into it a little bit.
>> In terms of Amazon's track record though,
there are instances in which the company has given broad swaths of its
global workforce latitude to tap into consumer data.
I mean 44% of US residents use Prime,
that is a crazy amount especially considering that the largest health care
system in America HCA only has access to approximately 1% of US residents.
Amazon knows what you're buying, what pills you take and
it can guide your decisions to buy and when and
we'll probably use those in terms of health care.
>> Great, that's great, awesome.
Remember when Elizabeth Warren was talking about the need
to break up Big Tech, Amazon, is it a grocery service?
Is it an online retailer?
Is it a health care provider?
I mean, it is taking over every sector of our economy and
the fact that we already have a broken healthcare model doesn't make me feel good
about the fact that Amazon is now getting involved.
Along with other tech companies by the way,
in acquiring health providers in this case One Medical and of course you're going
to hear all sorts of happy talk about how this is gonna be super efficient.
This is great.
Just like we heard from the tech sector about yeah,
social media, it's gonna democratize,
that's what we want to do over here in Silicon Valley, we want to democratize.
Do you feel more democracy with the tech sector right now?
So, with all the happy talk we hear about how this is going to lead
to more efficiency in health care, possibly lower costs.
What's the reality?
Let's go back to that Axios reporter who has done some pretty decent digging
into this story.
>> Amazon and One Medical say this deal will make things more convenient for
those using health care services.
Amazon also says this acquisition will help make health care more accessible to
people who haven't had access to it.
So, will Amazon's expansion here make health care more accessible,
more broadly available?
>> I'd love to say the answer is yes but unfortunately I do not have any current
evidence to support that theory and I say that only because Amazon's efforts in
health care so far, have been largely directed at the worried well.
And so have One Medical's, they largely serve people who are fairly affluent,
fairly wealthy and want what they call concierge medical care.
I will say Amazon had one effort that was targeted at the working class.
It had a partnership,
still has a partnership with a company called Crossover Healthcare and so
they have clinics set up with them near Amazon warehouses.
It remains to be seen how this deal will impact those,
I definitely will have my eyes peeled for that.
But I don't see this deal as about equity or accessibility to be honest.
>> Yeah, she's right about that because anyone who would be naive enough
to think a private company acquiring another private company is somehow
going to solve our health care concerns, is just incredibly misled.
And incredibly ignorant about how private industry works in this country [LAUGH].
Now finally, what's up with the FTC?
I mean the FTC, especially under Lina Kahn's leadership has been pretty good
in fighting back against monopolies and these types of acquisitions.
Now, apparently they did not fight against this acquisition,
but they say that they are still investigating it and
can potentially roll back this acquisition.
We all know that that's not gonna happen, right?
But lemme give you the statement.
So this is Douglas Farr, who's a spokesperson for
the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC's investigation of Amazon's acquisition of One Medical continues.
The commission will continue to look at possible
harms to competition created by this merger,
as well as possible harms to consumers that may result from Amazon's control.
And use of sensitive consumer health information held by One Medical,
but it's a lot harder to undo an acquisition,
especially compared to preventing it from happening in the first place.
So, don't be misled into thinking they're gonna reverse this, they're not gonna
reverse it, it's incredibly hard to do it, what's done is done.
Amazon has acquired One Medical and they've acquired the members that had
already signed up for One Medical and all the data that comes along with it.
So let's see what they do with it, I don't have high hopes, I don't think that this
is gonna lead to any real solution when it comes to our broken healthcare model.