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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: 1) by cocaine overdose on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:04PM (4 children)
Benzos' plays have been astounding so far, but I'm not looking forward to seeing a monopoly on healthcare (moreso than now!), that will invariably come if this testing-the-waters succeeds. But I am excited to see how Bongos will deal with the absolute clusterfuck of Customer Support that will come from all of this. Amazon is already pretty awful in timely and useful customer response, and the majority of which (the customer service handlers) are from stay-at-home mom contractors and other "make easy money from home types." HIPPA's gonna be a nightmare.
And Amazon has been growing massively huge, the things it can get away with have grown and I'm looking forward to see what path its demise will take, down the road. Will he fade into obscurity like IBM? Will governments decide (HA!) his tentacles have reached too far and dissolve him like Standard Oil? Maybe we'll see something new, like Bannanoz wage a war against the world and take Morocco as his own nation-state. Now if only the history books to be written can capture the complex emotions of the time. Surely the Athenians had such times, but everything on them is sterilized.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday March 08 2018, @02:57PM (3 children)
My guess is we're going to see a monopoly on pharmacy business rather than healthcare in general. Walgreens and CVS long ago killed the last independents around where I live, also employer incredibly strongly pushes mail order refills which are cheaper and more convenient, and now they're all about to get wiped out by Amazon. I wonder how Amazon is going to work around legacy pharmacist make-work laws, and how they're going to work around controlled substances or abuse substances. Possibly the only reason they haven't already wiped Walgreens off the map is because they have no idea what the answer could be.
Things that suck get their named changed a lot; a quarter century ago we had "WIC" (pregnant) women infants and children, probably renamed ten times since then, where the .gov wrote the worlds weirdest check with numerous detailed requirements such that poor mothers could get precisely, and only, one quart of milk, exactly 12 oz of cheddar cheese, one 16 oz bag of beans and one of rice, etc etc. I worked at a small supermarket while in school and WIC checks were a documentation nightmare such that when I helped out cashiering if a WIC check came thru I'd call for help. There were elaborate anti-fraud procedures for the store employees to follow, involving much paperwork. Anyway, my point is doing all that documentation and logistical stuff with amazon's legendary systems would imply the future of welfare might be the old concept of WIC checks on steroids... rather than buying and selling food stamps at dive bars as was standard operation procedure in the old days, the .gov will decide exactly what poor people purchase and have amazon deliver exactly that to their homes, which will be interesting.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 08 2018, @03:51PM
The pharmacy monopoly has been in the works for about 30 years now. Walmart is the culprit. So - Amazon may out-monoplolize those hillbilly Waltons? I don't know which side to cheer for.
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)
WIC is easy now, it's all done off the same card food stamps come on. Just swipe, the system WICs what's WICable, EBT's the rest, and cash benefits or actual cash for the rest.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday March 09 2018, @03:11PM
Really? Well I suppose cash register systems are somewhat more complicated now than in 1990, its believable. Most of the foolishness they put us thru was to prove lack of not just recipient fraud but corporate fraud too. Staple the receipt to the deposited check and write some number from the end user ID on the receipt to prove the check and recipient relationship was 1:1 and we had to deposit the checks specially so they needed special handling in the store, it was a mess.
In that case I guess Amazon would have to rely solely on their logistics empire.