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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.
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(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.