Amazon Plans to Enter the Rx Business. Good or Bad?

[Jacqueline]

Hm, haven’t read your links yet but this fills me with horror…why, because although many Items I will happily buy from Amazon, where it comes to foodstuffs and-or medications, I would fear I am not getting the genuine article…the pharmacy – chemist for me it would be every time…

[ed-tobias]

I don’t share your quality concerns, Jacqueline. If you read the article you’ll see that Amazon is in the process of buying a firm that’s already in the business of providing prescription drugs by mail. I do have a concern regarding competition, however. Other large mail order prescription providers here in the U.S., such as CVS and Walgreens, as well as local, independent, pharmacies may be rolled over  by the Amazon steamroller. We’ll see whether this is positive, or negative, for we patients.

[Jacqueline]

I will continue handing over my, any future medical prescriptions, directly to our local pharmacy-chemist which is a short walking distance from our local GP surgery, and with a relatively short time to wait whilst the pharmacist makes them up….maybe it is different in varying countries compared to UK….we dont get our prescriptions by mail, we get ours in person…

So maybe this topic wasn’t relevant to me…

[Gale Langseth Vester]

Jacqueline,

I live in Denmark, so I’m well outside the scope of Amazon prescription custom, too. Even so, I do share your stance on the importance of getting the genuine article, especially when the ‘brand names’ are something that aren’t easily checked or are nearly invisible, if you will.

The steamroller of Amazon will likely go on and on and … until when, well, I can’t even guess!