
Amazon Care - tvanzyl
https://amazon.care/
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064517)

------
vorpalhex
This is an interesting idea.

I have tele-doctor services available cheaply ($50 a pop) through my plan, and
actually it works very well for a lot of nuisance type items like minor
infections. It's pretty quick, and I seem to always get a doctor in my state.

I'm curious about the economies of in-home visits. Given a large enough
office, in-office visits obviously makes a ton of sense and many large offices
already keep a clinician or nurse desk in them (think the kind of services
available at your local CVS/Walgreens). However, home visits would seem like
you'd be paying a medical professional a lot of money to sit in traffic
depending on the locale..

------
anon11378
It's time for a LegalZoom-like service for healthcare. 99% of visits to a
physician can be addressed through textbook pills & treatment paths.

My best friend is a nurse practitioner. Anytime I get real sick, I text her a
list of my symptoms and before the conversation is over the local pharmacy is
processing my prescriptions for me.

If this doesn't highlight how fundamentally messed up the healthcare and
industry is, I don't know what will. Those on the other side say "well, what
if you had cancer..." Well, fine, let's keep the escalation options available
(doctors/specialists/hospitals) and gut everything else.

------
cvaidya1986
Sounds like the goal is to pilot within Amazon first and then make it
available for all.

------
capableweb
I thought this was a joke at first but seems to be serious. What is the
endgame for Amazon with a service like this for their employees? What do the
employees miss out on using Amazon Care instead of a third-party healthcare
provider and vice-versa?

Their FAQ ([https://amazon.care/faq](https://amazon.care/faq)) should include
a "Why Amazon Care"

~~~
adrianmonk
I haven't been following closely, but I assume this must be the launch of
Haven:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haven_(healthcare)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haven_\(healthcare\))

The reason is to save money by bringing a service in house, just like big
companies do with all kinds of other services and products. (For example, if
you're a 25-person company, you let a law firm handle your legal work. If
you're a 25,000-person company, you have a staff of lawyers who work directly
for you.) Insurance companies make a profit, so by doing it yourself, you can
keep that money instead of giving it to them.

I don't see a reason to believe it should necessarily mean their employees
miss out on anything. In theory they're at an advantage by cutting out the
middleman. So in theory they could cut costs and increase benefits even if
they can't improve and operate it more efficiently than current insurance
companies.

------
bassman9000
It's nice to see feudalism is coming back. To all the services that these
companies already provide, for which employees won't pay taxes (and neither
will companies, due to clever tax schemes), now we add health care. Housing
will be next, if not already. Legal services, transportation, food,
healthcare, housing, nursery, all gross-income 100% deducted: zero sales tax,
minimum income tax, in the most liberal state, by the most liberal people.

Large company-states are not that far off.

~~~
pdelgallego

       You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
       Another day older and deeper in debt
    

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUpTJg2EBpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUpTJg2EBpw)

------
legitster
If this is the much hyped Amazon foray into the healthcare, I think it is fair
to be disappointed. Digital concierge care isn't exactly new (although the
onsite visits are intriguing.

If you are like me, you are sitting around and rooting for someone just like
Amazon to come in and shake up the medical industry like they did retail and
publishing. But I think too many bad practices are codified into law
(understandably), and it's not a problem that enough capital is going to
solve.

To be fair to digital concierge care though, I think they are good but
underutilized services. A lot of time consuming things can just as easily be
done virtually (getting a sick note, renewing a prescription, checking out a
rash). In my experience, traditional providers do a bad job of making the
services easy to use or attractive.

------
zachrose
On a smaller scale, Rudy’s Barbecue in Texas did something similar by
canceling their comprehensive health care insurance, hiring a doctor to be the
whole company's PCP, paying for surgeries directly through Texas Free Market
Surgery, and buying “wraparound insurance” for everything else.

[https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/06/06/rudys-
bbq...](https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/06/06/rudys-bbq-expects-
to-slash-health-costs-with-major.html) (Paywalled)

~~~
legitster
There was a startup in Seattle many years ago that offered a similar program
(I think it was called Qliance? They went under.) For $40 a month, you got
membership to unlimited concierge care.

I think part of the story is that the "wraparound insurance" has to cover so
much, that the PCP just becomes duplicitous and hard to justify.

------
univalent
Cerner does this in office in Kansas City. I thought it was pretty cool. Keeps
their costs (presumably) lower.

------
purplezooey
Holy crap there's a mailto: link at the bottom. The 1990s called and wants
their web page back.

------
smacktoward
"You need to get more cardio. Click here to volunteer for a shift in one of
our warehouses!"

~~~
evv
Introducing Amazon Playhouse, a free gamified gym. Pack boxes, earn points,
get fit! Improve your point score week-over-week and get free Amazon prime.

Once you're physically exhausted, come test your mental stamina and earn a
pretty penny on Amazon Mechanical Turk, the free-to-play game which challenges
your very human intelligence.

Tired of paying the bills? Coming soon, you can spend your Amazon Playhouse
points to stay at Amazon Bunk, our onsite dormitory and cafeteria. You'll
never have to stop playing again!

