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from the all-the-more-to-get-folk-in-the-store dept.
Walmart could acquire the health insurer Humana, in a deal reminiscent of CVS's acquisition of Aetna:
Walmart Inc. is in preliminary talks to buy insurer Humana Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, a deal that would mark a dramatic shift for the retail behemoth and the latest in a recent flurry of big deals in health-care services.
It isn't clear what terms the companies may be discussing, and there is no guarantee they will strike a deal. If they do, the deal would be big: Humana currently has a market value of about $37 billion. It also would be Walmart's largest deal by far, eclipsing its 1999 acquisition of the U.K.'s Asda Group PLC for $10.8 billion. Walmart, which in addition to being the world's biggest retailer is also a major drugstore operator, has a market value of about $260 billion.
[...] Walmart has a vast pharmacy business, with locations in most of its roughly 4,700 U.S. stores and in many of it Sam's Club warehouse locations. Humana is a Medicare-focused insurer that could deepen Walmart's relationship with a key demographic—seniors—at a time when the retailer is being threatened by Amazon on several fronts.
Also at CNN.
Related: $54 Billion Anthem-Cigna Health Insurer Merger Rejected by U.S. Judge
CVS Attempting $66 Billion Acquisition of Health Insurer Aetna
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Is Amazon Planning a Disruptive AWS-Like Move Into Health Care?
Amazon Prime... For Medicaid Recipients
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @06:11PM (9 children)
What we had before ObamaCare was far from a free market, due especially to governmental meddling that began during WWII in pursuit of wartime "economics".
Worst of all, insurance companies were transformed from managers of risk into inscrutable, black-box payment networks for even the minutest transaction in the health-care industry.
So, we need to get back to insurance as risk management, and we need to get back to a consumer–producer dynamic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @06:33PM
.. not a true Scotsman...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday March 31 2018, @06:35PM (3 children)
Anyone who thinks that medical insurance can ever be like other insurance such as auto or house is an idiot.
Imagine this situation: you are out walking and you suffer a stroke or heart attack.
You can't negotiate who provides the ambulance or where the ambulance takes you because:
1. The most important thing for you is to get to an ER as soon as possible.
2. You may not be able to communicate.
On a lesser note: there is an advantage in doctors seeing all your medical history, which cuts strongly against shopping around for medical services for each type of illness or treatment required.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday March 31 2018, @10:11PM
You say that is if that is a novelty or something. Where do you get your medical care where this is not already the case?
The other reason medical insurance can't be like other insurance is this insistence that everyone gets to control what they put in their own body, drugs, dicks, drinks and daily double cheese burgers, and EVERYONE else gets to STFU and pay for their medical care, because you can't charge one person for their actual risk factors because that would be discriminatory.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @10:15PM
The Free Market is an iterative process; it's enough to be able to review history.
Secondly, part of employing a risk manager (like insurance) is to pay them to do that kind of analysis for you, and thereby come up with solutions in advance of need.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @12:04AM
House and auto insurance is also a disaster, with companies constantly ripping people off and trying to get out of paying. They should be regulated into oblivion, at the very least.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday March 31 2018, @10:02PM (3 children)
Never the less, the insurance system we had previously only needed a few fixes to make it quite good compared to what we have under obamacare today.
Removing pre-existing condition denials and adding cross state competition would have been more than enough as a first go.
What you see is the market recognizing that Obamacare is going to collapse of its own weight.
They are getting into position of OWNING health care providers and insurers, because that is going to be where its at after this mess crashes.
You think you can't afford your tax bill now, wait for single payer. Because that's the only way Obamacare survives.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @12:21AM (2 children)
Because the "market" is an utter disaster when it comes to health care. One way to make money is to deny care as often as possible, which we what we constantly see. This is not acceptable for healthcare. Obamacare did not fix this; it only made it slightly better.
What we actually need is single payer, which could be implemented as medicare-for-all. Despite all the nonsensical propaganda about waiting times, other first world countries with single payer systems do not have 10,000+ people dying every year from preventable illnesses because they can't afford medical care, and nor do they have medical bankruptcies. In those countries, the waiting times are almost always based on need, whereas in the US, it is based on how much money you have. And, sure, you could find a few examples of things going wrong in single payer systems, but I could point to tens of thousands of examples of things going wrong with our system.
The "few fixes" you speak of wouldn't even begin to address the issues with our system, because the market is simply a bad fit for healthcare.
Wrong. Without price-gouging for-profit insurance companies, we would be paying less [washingtonpost.com] for medical care, not more. Also, people with insurance wouldn't have to pay massive amounts of money for insurance every month, so even if some people's taxes did increase, they would ultimately be better off because they wouldn't be paying price-gouging insurance companies. There is no good evidence showing that single payer is more expensive, and plenty of good evidence that it would be less expensive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @12:37AM
It's not much of a market when your insurance is pretty much attached to your place of employment.
How did such a weird marriage come about? Government meddling.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 01 2018, @02:21PM
OTOH, when they're dying because they're in those waiting lines, they are dying because they can't afford health care that doesn't have those waiting lines. Bet it's more than 10,000+ per year.
Ultimately, no one and no country can afford the health care that would be required to keep people alive indefinitely.