Amazon Wants to be Your Drugstore

Amazon has made continued efforts to break into the US health care marketplace. These have included various programs for filling customer prescriptions, such as a direct prescription service and buying PillPack, an innovative online pharmacy in 2019.

Last week, Amazon announced RxPass, a new program for filling prescriptions for generic drugs. For a single $5 per month fee, Amazon will fill unlimited generic prescriptions from a list of about eighty drugs - of course with free shipping! This becomes an additional Amazon Prime benefit, as only Prime members can subscribe.

We looked at Amazon’s current prescription business, and to calibrate it, compared it to Walmart.com customer prescriptions. Amazon has a surprisingly small presence in prescriptions, so there is a lot of room to grow.

Among recent Amazon customers, only 3% filled their most recent prescription at Amazon.com (Chart 1).