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Amazon launches a low-cost version of Prime for Medicaid recipients
Amazon announced this morning it will offer a low-cost version of its Prime membership program to qualifying recipients of Medicaid. The program will bring the cost of Prime down from the usual $10.99 per month to about half that, at $5.99 per month, while still offering the full range of Prime perks, including free, two-day shipping on millions of products, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Photos, Prime Reading, Prime Now, Audible Channels, and more.
The new program is an expansion on Amazon's discounted Prime service for customers on government assistance, launched in June 2017. For the same price of $5.99 per month, Amazon offers Prime memberships to any U.S. customer with a valid EBT card – the card that's used to disburse funds for assistance programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC).
It could be a way to get users with certain health care requirements on board before Amazon launches its own health insurance company.
Also at USA Today.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Thursday March 08 2018, @01:55PM (24 children)
The thing about Medicare/Medicaid is that it is funded by the rest of us, with the specific aim of funding those who are not, generally speaking, able to fund it for themselves. The "welfare state", as you called it.
Amazon's means of funding such services will be from the end-user; not from the rest of us.
What this will effectively do, if it is the only option available to these low-income folks, is shear off the bottom tiers of those who need care.
Aside from that, right now, the government's various safety nets, as lousy and eroded as they are, address a lot of healthcare needs, both directly and through insurance support programs. In this environment, with all that already handled, private sources have not come even close to picking up the remaining slack – millions of people remain without adequate (or any) healthcare. Even more so since the ACA has been interfered with by the current administration, and more yet to come.
The often bandied about assertion that private enterprise should be left handle healthcare needs and all would be well is not even true enough to handle the fraction of healthcare needs that remain now; there's no reason at all to accept any assertion that they would do so if the portion the government covers now succumbed to such ideas.
When you cheer the privatization of healthcare for the poor, you're cheering for vastly worsened circumstances for them. If that's what you intend to do, by all means, carry on. But as you do so, let's not pretend that private healthcare will be better for the poor in any way, shape or form. It might be better for (some) taxpayers, in particular those who can afford their own healthcare; it might seem better for the presently healthy taxpayer who cannot afford their own healthcare, but that is an illusion brought about by self-deception or ignorance.
For my part, I pay the taxes without protest. I think it's one of the few things the government does that is actually worth doing – you don't want to even get me started on the list of things they do that aren't. While Amazon's approach here may well benefit middle tier healthcare customers, I'm under no illusions that it will, in any way, address the lower tiers. For that, we have to spread the costs out.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:25PM (16 children)
Not only would a private organization have to compete with a violently imposed monopoly, but it would also have to fund the very competition with which it is supposed to be competing.
The VIM is the reason that the health-care industry is so horrifically distorted; nothing about it is normal.
The insurance companies have been converted into specialized payment networks that divorce consumers from producers, a frankenstein creature that is the natural consequence of governmental meddling beginning during World War 2 (and probably before).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday March 08 2018, @03:04PM (2 children)
There seems to be a lot of LARPing that we currently live in a white European country paradise of socialized medicine and some Dr Seuss-style capitalist villain is going to set up something worse than our current system because like a Bond villain he enjoys inflicting pain.
The reality is we have one company which admittedly a significant fraction of the population distrusts or hates, which has a gold plated incredible logistics system, is about to wipe out an industry of somewhat less well run companies.
Its like fretting as if the the orks are invading in LOTR (Or the orks invading Europe?), when the reality is its a lot more like the local GM dealership is about to get wiped out by the new Toyota dealership and life is gonna go on as it was, other than you'll get a slightly better deal for your money.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:10PM (1 child)
It's not at all clear that you'll get a better deal for your money, but you might get more reliable home delivery. There's no reason to assume it would be worse in all respects.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday March 09 2018, @03:15PM
Agreed with the caveat that more reliable home delivery IS a better deal for your money, so even then... Thats why I kinda liked my standard SN automobile analogy in that Toyotas are generally not cheaper than GM but the "total lifetime cost of ownership" is likely better overall, aside from intangibles like driving a better car.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday March 08 2018, @05:17PM (8 children)
Roads, fire departments, huge numbers of charities, etc. Your "VIM" is entirely too hysterical, even if technically accurate. People / organizations – some of them – do compete, or at least operate in the same space. It's outright ridiculous to hold that up as an excuse for letting people suffer.
The fact is, without government, and many of its "VIMs", you'd be completely out of luck. Healthcare, in fact, is one of those areas where that's exactly what happens to many people.
Some people do exert themselves in a charitable manner. The point was, and remains, that not nearly enough of them do despite the obvious needs, and based on the lack of response to those obvious needs at a relatively lower level, there's no reason to think that if the need was greater, that the coverage would somehow be more comprehensive.
Insurance is a way to pool funds against risk, and (ideally) get the funds to those who need pay for the services. This is not an unnatural consequence of a free marketplace where risk is a profoundly significant factor.
Government propped-up insurance – the ACA – was intended to increase the pool coverage. It was doing so, hardly ideally, but still it was doing so to the tune of tens of millions of newly covered individuals, and now is degrading rapidly in its end effects because it's been maliciously interfered with rather than actually honed towards a more effective end that more closely approximates what it was intended to do.
I am all for single payer healthcare and leaving the health insurance industry in the dust. But make no mistake: it's still pooling money and sharing it out to the providers of healthcare. The difference, hopefully, is it wouldn't be leaving people out, which is a severe fault of almost all free market pool systems.
As far as I'm concerned, the healthcare insurance industry and the individual-payer healthcare system are both long past their sell-by dates; government, however, is not.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:33PM (3 children)
The ACA has been maliciously interfered with from day 1. It would have been far more effective without red states actively undermining it. With the current administration it is also able to undermine it further.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by schad on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:10PM (1 child)
This is an entirely predictable and natural consequence of trying to make a bunch of people do something they don't want to do. Of course they'll try to undermine it at every turn! Why in the world would you ever have expected otherwise?
It's really exactly the same as what's going on now with immigration, where certain elected officials are basically doing their best to undermine the federal government at every turn using all legal authority they have. In some cases their authority may not even be legal, but until SCOTUS says "no" they still get to do it. Even after SCOTUS says "no" they may continue to do it. There are a lot of ways to get out of doing things you don't want to do, and it takes a lot of court battles -- and a lot of time -- before anyone will force you to do it.
Thus, if you want health care reform, you need to convince a clear majority of the country that you need it. Anything less and it won't work.
The good news, assuming you're an advocate for single payer, is that the systematic dismantling of Obamacare is likely to result in at least a few states joining Massachusetts in the ranks of universally insured. Some of them may even go so far as single-payer. If those experiments work out as well as their proponents would like to believe, they'll quickly spread to the rest of the country. Ultimately we'll get something nationally, and there you go.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Friday March 09 2018, @03:17PM
Historically very low impact. You need to convince a majority of election campaign and national committee donors that you need it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @08:11PM
Then maybe the Democrats should have just done single payer when they had a supermajority. Instead, we got this mess which doesn't fix the fundamental problems with our health care system; we didn't even get a public option. The Democrats are overall not a very progressive party.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:21PM (3 children)
Healthcare comes in many different cases, some of which are better handled by universal health care, and some by insurance.
Insurance *should* be risk pooling. US insurance is more nearly an extortion racket. But back to health care.
case 1) Basic health care is going to be needed by everyone. Insurance is a bad model for this, as it merely invokes additional parties to be paid.
case 2) Rare events. This is something that say, 1 in 100 people would have happen to them during their lifetime. One can reasonably argue that this case is justifiably covered by insurance.
case 3) Optional or cosmetic surgery. This doesn't need to be covered by basic care, and whether insurance should cover it depends on the policy...usually it won't. Save up and pay for it yourself.
case 4) Public Health. This should definitely be wholly funded by the government. You want contagious diseases suppressed.
I've artificially created descriptions that seem to have clear boundaries, but they don't. One can rationally argue exactly where each of those boundaries should be. My preference would be to have basic health care expand to include rare events, and get the insurance companies totally out of the health care business.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:50PM
Your "Public Health" category doesn't imply that governmental funding is necessary.
Rather, that too is a matter of risk management; a robust industry of insurance that actually manages risk would be naturally induced by market incentives to set rates in such a way that individuals and organizations take steps to reduce the risk of wide-scale epidemics. For instance, insurance companies could offer premium reductions to airports that screen passengers for sickness. Families could be given reduced premiums for getting their children vaccinated, or for getting a flu shot, etc.
Now, maybe in the present organization of society, this kind of large-scale risk management is not logistically feasible, but it's not impossible; strictly speaking, "government" is not a necessary solution. Indeed, anybody who is interested in living in a society that could be called "civilized" should be interested in replacing the "government" with something more voluntary, anyway, and that basically means replacing "government" with capitalism.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday March 09 2018, @03:23PM (1 child)
Cases 1 and 2 imply property tax funding for medical care. Its a direct relationship.
Case 1 virtually all non-ER care my elderly ancestors get comes from the closest provider, and only 1/3 of the US people have jobs, so for 2/3 of the population, closest provider will always be closest to home, where you pay prop tax.
Case 2 if your transportation system is sub-par or your residents are shitty people, the ER is going to get a lot of incoming trauma patients. Suburbs not so much.
As far as socialism BS arguments, health care boils down to the same argument as everything else in the local prop tax budget, everyone living here gets what they paid for, however high or low. Parks and rec, schools, police, fire, DOT, etc. Essentially we're already implemented this except with numerous well paid middlemen and we refuse to do it directly, so we do stealth prop tax by billing everyone who lives here for the local monopoly hospital provider via W-2 paycheck deductions, which is a stupid way to pay a property tax.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 09 2018, @05:41PM
There's some legitimacy to your argument, but you'll need to take it up with the supreme court. They decided that cities and counties could not have a residency requirement for social support services.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:52PM (3 children)
Violently Imposed Monopoly
Watching people die in the streets seems pretty violent to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:58PM (2 children)
Don't stick a gun in my face and try to make me do something about it—especially when your solutions are so stupid, anyway.
The most robust solutions come out of agreement, not coercion; civilized society is an act of individual will, not mandate.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:35PM (1 child)
Don't stick a gun in my face and try to make me do something about it
Without a monopoly on violence what's to stop me from sticking an actual gun in your face to pay my medical bills?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @09:17PM
My own prevention, and my own retaliation.
Your government police show up after the act, not during the act. And, as a violently imposed monopoly, there's not much incentive to do a good job, anyway.
There's an incentive to protect oneself, or to band together with like minds to protect each other. Neither is your "government" solution sufficient, nor is it necessary.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday March 08 2018, @04:03PM (1 child)
Do not lump Medicare in with Medicaid.
They are fundamentally different.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday March 08 2018, @04:32PM
They're both significant components of the social safety net.
I'm not saying they operate the same or at the same governmental level.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday March 08 2018, @05:24PM (4 children)
And that's how entitlements become a bribe for the status quo. You knuckle under to the corruption just because there are a "few things" that you approve of. The scary people that would fix that corruption would also cut your favored programs, because those are out of control spending. It's a shame that so many people chose the quick buck now rather than a future later.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:25PM (3 children)
It's definitely much simpler than that. Letting people suffer health issues that they aren't into suffering, which could be ameliorated, is not something I can get behind.
You personally want to have no medical care and suffer some serious problem? I'm right behind you. Suffer away. I'll take pictures and write snarky comments, maybe try to sell your body parts as they fall off.
But for those who don't want to slide down the masochistic razor blade of life, I think we're well past the level a society needs to get to where it not only can help, it should help.
The rest of the social-safety-net arguments are all low-level noise to me. Government has no monopoly on corruption – the private sector's record in dealing with the poor is awful – nor do I think that throwing out the baby with the bathwater is advisable here. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or even the adequate. Set something up that works (the ACA works with the established insurance industry, for instance), then improve it. If you want to replace it, by all means, but make sure the replacement is better. Otherwise, you're just imposing unnecessary suffering, no matter what excuses you might try to field to explain your behavior.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Thursday March 08 2018, @06:29PM
Well, they can't scare you by withholding Halliburton's swag, can they?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:05PM (1 child)
It does in the sectors over which it has declared itself a monopoly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Thursday March 08 2018, @09:11PM
Oh, does it? You mean like regulating recreational drugs such as alcohol and pot and so forth, in allowing and disallowing and sales? Surely you see no extra-governmental corruption there, eh? How about WRT the control of the airwaves - no, no corruption in the private sector there, right? How about in tax collection? That's 100% government, right? And not a single bit of corruption in the private sector WRT taxes, right? Right? What about patents? Totally a government monopoly. Surely there's no private sector corruption around patents! Private sector use of copyrights corrupt? IMPROBAPOSSIBLE©! Legislation? Legislation is all-government, all-the-time. And the largest corrupt influence on that? The bloody private sector, that's what. The courts? Again, 100% government monopoly. Private sector never corruptly involves themselves there, right? FFS.
No. Turns out, you have zero idea whatsoever what you're talking about.
The government establishes a monopoly in some area of any real consequence, the private sector often enough weasels right in there and turns it into a slimy mess. Which areas? Why, the ones with large enough amounts of money at stake and available to wave around, of course.
Human nature, as amply demonstrated by all manner of private entities: The "haves" will inevitably try to lord it over the "have-nots." They will drone on about how the lowly deserve to be low because reasons, and the lowly should suffer because reasons, and the lowly should be grateful because reasons, and on and on and on. While this goes on, the money trickles up, and the disadvantages waterfall downwards. Leroy Moneybags III has his yacht and his facelift, and Joe Poorboy has his ramen noodles and his unrevised hernia. All is right with the world because reasons. No. Just no.
A good bit of this is why we can't actually get along without government. People are selfish, mean, and heartless, and the more leverage they have, the more likely those particular flaws will float to the surface as steaming personality turds. Our (US) form of government, for all its myriad flaws, tends to buffer that stuff and expose more of it than the typical private entity – and our government at least has often recognized it actually has a responsibility to the people, something many – most – private entities would just as soon you never brought up.
Yeah, government is corrupt as hell, and it's annoying when things don't go perfectly, or even well. But don't even bother to try to tell me that private enterprise is very likely to do it better. Responsible businesses with real social consciences are pretty bloody rare.
You know that bit about "corporations are like people"? Yeah, they are – and the people they are like are the psychopaths and sociopaths.