
Walmart in Early-Stage Acquisition Talks with Humana - mudil
https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-in-early-stage-acquisition-talks-with-humana-1522365618
======
seibelj
If any company is capable of stopping the trend to progressively more
expensive US health insurance that gets progressively shittier in quality, I
will support it. I don’t care what company, what monopoly, honestly it doesn’t
matter. The situation is so horribly fucked that I automatically support any
change whatsoever.

~~~
freehunter
Problem is, Walmart basically _invented_ the idea of making a product
substantially worse in order to sell it at a lower price. Items in Walmart
often aren't "the same product but cheaper" but many times are "a
substantially reduced quality version of an item, sold at a cheaper price than
the original". So you might get cheaper health plans... but it's likely going
to come at a reduced quality, too.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-
mart](https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart)

~~~
prepend
For many things, this is exactly what I want. Walmart has great prices for the
same as their competitors and their service is ok.

They aren’t Costco, but they deliver exactly what they promise - minimal
quality for the best price.

But I’d never buy non-consumables from them.

~~~
Consultant32452
I agree with you. Walmart already revolutionized pharma once by offering a
huge list of drugs for $4/30-day and $10/-90 day. Even if no one reading this
buys those drugs from Wal-Mart, you get them cheaply because Wal-Mart forced
everyone else to drop prices to compete. I wonder if it could be calculated
how many lives have been saved by doing this. Anecdotally I know a lot of
people whose lives have been improved by being able to take those cheap
options. And I know a couple of doctors who say they point their patients in
that direction to help them save money.

>But I’d never buy non-consumables from them.

I'm curious, would you get a Wal-Mart xray or MRI? Depending on the issue, I
think I might.

~~~
tzs
> Walmart already revolutionized pharma once by offering a huge list of drugs
> for $4/30-day and $10/-90 day

I was shocked to find that some of my prescriptions that were costing me $20
out of pocket _with_ _insurance_ at Rite Aid where $4 cash price at Walmart.
I've moved everything I can to cash at Walmart, even in some cases where the
Walmart cash price is a little higher than my with-insurance price elsewhere,
just on the general principle that I don't want my insurance company to know
what drugs I take [1].

[1] This stems from a time once when a condition I had improved to the point
that I could stop taking drugs for it. A few months later it returned, and I
asked my doctor to renew my prescription. He did so...and the insurance
company rejected it. They were treating it like I was a brand new patient, and
they no longer allowed that drug unless you had first tried a couple other
newer drugs and they were not acceptable. I'd never had those drugs, but I'd
had others in their families and they were either not very effective or had
annoying side effects. I was willing to try the new drugs eventually, if this
relapse turned out to not be temporary, but in the short term I wanted what we
already knew worked well.

~~~
gumby
You might look up the company IMS and the states with mandatory prescription
surveillance. When I was in the “biz” we could get prescription data at least
by county, in some places by pharmacy and/or prescriber and, of course, for
some drugs the patient.

Wait, you thought that info was confidential? Ha, this is the USA!

~~~
refurb
It's still confidential as patient identify is hidden.

~~~
gumby
Did you read my comment? It ended with, "and, of course, for some drugs the
patient." Sometime we could connect directly with patients. Sorry.

Knowing this changed my use of pharmacies.

------
SrslyJosh
I see we're moving along steadily towards corporation as nation-state. Hello,
Snow Crash!

~~~
arkis22
If corporations become nation-states it is simply because our government is
drastically ineffective. Sad stuff, but it does seem to be happening.

~~~
fake-name
The problem with that is that it places a fiscal incentive on the companies to
_make_ the government as ineffective as possible, in hopes of exploiting
regulations and quashing competitors.

The solution to corporations breaking the government isn't to just say "well,
it was ineffective anyways".

~~~
arkis22
I think you're correct. It does place that fiscal incentive. But can you
honestly look at the last 20/30 years and say that private companies haven't
tried to make the government as ineffective as possible?

Lobbying is huge. There are innumerable ways for incumbents to secure rents.
Healthcare companies keep cashing blank checks from the government. Amazon
also basically eliminated a huge chunk of tax revenue by turning retail into a
profitless endeavor.

The solution is to make our government respected, effective, and intelligent.
That's hard.

~~~
siruncledrew
The solution seems like it should just be a given, yet at the same time is
really asking a lot of America.

It's pretty crazy that the combined market cap of 5 companies: Walmart,
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple [0] are essentially equal to the entire
GDP of Africa [1].

[0] [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-market-cap-
falls-b...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-market-cap-falls-behind-
microsofts-into-4th-place-2018-03-29)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Africa)

~~~
smnrchrds
It's a meaningless comparison. GDP is annual. Market cap is supposed to
represent all future income in perpetuity at a discount. It's like comparing
the annual income of person A to the net worth of person B.

------
linuxftw
I think it's smart for Walmart to diversify it's business into something other
than retail. They need to grow revenue for shareholders, I don't think there's
any more large-growth opportunities for Walmart in that sector.

I do think this move is rather unoriginal, and is a 'me too' effort vs CVS &
Aetna.

Walmart is the #3 largest Pharmacy in the US, so there are potential savings
and efficiencies to be had with a health insurance merger.

~~~
fencepost
_I do think this move is rather unoriginal, and is a 'me too' effort vs CVS &
Aetna._

There's probably a little CVS/Aetna in their decision making, but I'm pretty
confident this is much more an "Oh crap!" response to the Amazon / Berkshire
Hathaway / Chase Healthcare venture announced earlier this year.

Walmart sees Amazon already looking at its core markets: cheap Chinese crap,
groceries, pharmacy. Its choices are to compete or to watch Amazon do to it
what it did to downtown shops over the last 40 years.

~~~
brownbat
It feels like everything Walmart does is in part a response to Bezos. And
given Buffett's exit last year, maybe him too.

It's not a totally crazy response, though. Even considering Berkshire and
Amazon haven't announced any real details and could basically just be self-
insuring their workers through a nonprofit they fund to reduce administrative
costs and taxes.

But it's like corporate Go. You so much as signal interest in a corner and the
other side has to reposition itself so it could defend the possibility.

------
mattsfrey
I'm assuming this might be a move to diversify knowing they will eventually be
losing substantial market share to amazon. Kind of terrifying really, to think
if they are going to apply the same business practices they've used in their
retail stores to healthcare.

------
aerotwelve
This really is an excellent addition to the horror show that we in America
call a health system.

------
FLUX-YOU
I bet this is an answer to the JPM + Amazon + Berkshire initiative

------
watchdogtimer
It's worth noting that Walmart already has some sales agreements with Humana.
My in-laws, for instance, have a Walmart-Humana Medicare part D drug plan.

------
sirmike_
archive.is version [https://archive.fo/5g19p](https://archive.fo/5g19p)

------
IloveHN84
Why does people keep posting articles behind paywalls here on HN?

~~~
grzm
From the FAQ:

> _" Are paywalls ok?"_

> _" It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds."_

> _" In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other
> users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off
> topic."_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

The mods have commented extensively on this as well. Here's a Tell HN where
'dang explains:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

And more comments, if you're interested:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:dang%20paywall&sort=byD...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

