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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: 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.