Amazon Plans to Offer 6-Month, Discount Generic Rx Fills
Amazon.com, Inc. launched a long-anticipated expansion of its pharmacy business on June 8, saying it will allow Prime members to purchase up to six-month supplies of generic prescription drugs for $6. Experts say Amazon is well positioned to claim substantial market share in the growing prescription drug delivery market, which incumbent players have already begun to target.
Industry watchers have argued over the notion that the web retailer would make a disruptive move into the pharmacy space ever since Amazon acquired PillPack in 2018. Experts tell AIS Health that Amazon’s well-developed logistics and internet retail abilities mean it will be a formidable player.
“I love the model,” Ashraf Shehata, national sector leader for health care and life sciences at KMPG, tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT. Shehata expects that Amazon will offer “almost a branded generic, although it’s branded by the distributor, not the manufacturer. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re going to see an Amazon Basics side of this — they already have a branded category for other commodities that would fit nicely into this.”