Amazon unveils a $5/month unlimited meds subscription as retailers race into pill delivery
A pack of migraine meds… with your monthly TP delivery. Amazon’s doubling down on its pharmacy biz with a new prescription-drug subscription. Prime members can now buy unlimited meds (and get ’em delivered to their doorstep) for a flat fee of $5/month — no insurance necessary. The subscription (dubbed “RXPass”) offers 80 medications for everything from high blood pressure to anxiety. Amazon’s targeting people who are juggling numerous prescriptions: 150M+ Americans take one or more of the drugs included in the RXPass.
Look back: Amazon bought online pharmacy PillPack for $750M in 2018 and splurged nearly $4B on membership-based health-clinic chain One Medical last year.
Pill pack: So far only 14% of prescription customers know about Amazon’s PillPack online pharmacy, but over a third say they plan to switch pharmacies in the next year.
Getting crowded… Nearly half of US adults take two or more meds daily, and a quarter say it’s difficult to afford the treatment they need. Now retailers are scrambling to get more prescription business. In 2021 Walmart added prescription discounts to its Walmart+ membership program. Mark Cuban’s discounted Cost Plus e-pharmacy attracted 1.5M customers just a year after launching. Meanwhile, CVS and Walgreens have ramped up their prescription offerings with features like mobile ordering and delivery. Amazon’s big differentiator: offering many drugs at one flat rate.
Old roads can open new paths… Amazon’s been moving into healthcare for years, but has yet to make a big mark in the $500B pharmacy retail space. Now it’s using its “old road” strengths (think: 168M Prime subscribers and a massive delivery network) to get ahead. Its bid is promising: nearly two-thirds of brick-and-mortar pharmacy customers have a Prime account.