How big will Amazon get? They sell stuff is as cheap or cheaper than the shops and you can get it next day. Order it at 7pm on a Saturday and some poor herbert will deliver it to you at 6pm the next Sunday evening. He will drive his own car, have no uniform, and be self employed. What happened to the good postman job? Remember the postman whistling in the old days, now they just zoom by.
Surely we can all agree on this: Amazon just doesn’t have enough power yet. Which is why Amazon appears to be quietly preparing to enter the pharmacy business.
Amazon’s World
If Amazon also jumps into the retail pharmacy business, there are fears that Walgreen’s and CVS could go the way of retail bookstores—an arena in which large corporate chains, along with tiny mom-and-pop outfits, have fallen victim to Amazon’s low prices and consumers’ demonstrated preference to get something online instead of schlepping down to a store. (Amazing what no brick-and-mortar costs, combined with $15-an-hour “fulfillment center” wages, will get you!)
“The likely Amazon entry into retail pharmacy is a major threat to CVS, on top of already dwindling storefront sales,” according to analyst Ana Gupte, as reported by the Washington Post.
Thus, buying an insurer would allow for CVS to insulate itself from some direct competition from Amazon… unless Amazon also bought an insurer. Or started issuing insurance. Or bought out every hospital in America and started its own version of Britain’s NHS—but floated by investor capital rather than taxpayer money.
High Times
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