原文標題：
Amazon Will Start Selling Cheap Hair-Loss Drugs.
It's a Huge Threat for This Stock.
原文連結：
https://tinyurl.com/2sezmx42
發布時間：
Updated Nov 14, 2024, 2:11 pm EST / Original Nov 14, 2024, 11:08 am EST
記者署名：
Josh Nathan-Kazis
原文內容：
Amazon.com’s latest lurch into the healthcare industry, announced Thursday morning, poses
an extraordinary threat to the many telehealth companies selling cheap
generics to treat hair loss and erectile dysfunction.
Amazon’s prices appear lower than those being offered by companies such as
Hims & Hers Health and Ro, and are available to all members of its Prime subscription service.
Amazon’s prices appear set to undercut the long list of competing telehealth
companies that rely on aggressive marketing campaigns to sell low-cost
generics online. Shares of Hims & Hers were down 22% after the announcement.
Amazon has made plenty of forays into the healthcare business, with mixed
success. This time, however, its new competitors are far less formidable than
the managed care companies and retail pharmacy chains Amazon has sought to
challenge in the past.
Amazon will charge $16 a month for the generic hair-loss pill finasteride.
Hims advertises a $22-a-month price for the same medicine, while Ro, a
privately held competitor, charges $20 per month.
“Access to affordable health and wellness solutions is important for every
individual and we’re committed to offering access to high-quality
personalized solutions across the Hims & Hers platform,” Hims said Thursday
morning.
Ro didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Amazon is charging $19 a month for erectile dysfunction pills and $10 per
month for an antiaging skin cream. A telehealth visit with primary care
provider Amazon One Medical to get the prescriptions costs as little as $29.
“We don’t know how successful it will be, but also note that this is a
serious competitive threat being introduced to the market,” Leerink Partners
analyst Michael Cherny wrote in a Thursday morning note.
The number of telehealth companies competing to sell cheap generics online
has grown this year amid a weight-loss drug gold rush. Companies like Hims
realized they could sell copycat versions of Novo Nordisk’s
GLP-1 medicine Wegovy made legally by compounding pharmacies.
The industry is now full of large and small players, none of them dominant,
and few prepared to withstand competition from Amazon.
Amazon is not offering compounded GLP-1 drugs. The compounded GLP-1 drug
market is controversial and could dry up quickly if the Food and Drug
Administration determines that Novo’s drug is no longer in shortage.
Amazon’s new offering is based around Amazon One Medical, the primary care
chain it bought for $3.9 billion in 2023. The company launched a
pay-per-visit telehealth offering through One Medical earlier this year.
Patients prescribed a generic treatment through the new program launched
Thursday will buy the medicine through Amazon Pharmacy, a delivery
prescription service Amazon opened in 2020.
Amazon has long eyed the healthcare sector, and has sparked periodic selloffs
in healthcare stocks on fears that Amazon’s scale would allow it to dominate
parts of the industry.
In 2018, pharmacy stocks plunged when Amazon announced a deal to buy the
online pharmacy PillPack. There were also worries over an Amazon program
called Haven Healthcare, which Amazon ran in partnership with Berkshire
Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase and briefly appeared to threaten the managed care sector.
In 2022, fears that Amazon would buy the home health-services firm Signify
Health put pressure on shares of large managed care companies. (CVS Health
eventually bought Signify for $8 billion.)
In taking on telehealth providers, Amazon appears to have chosen a much less
formidable target. They may not survive the onslaught.
心得/評論：
亞馬遜要進軍禿頭藥物治療市場
Bezos: 我退休了 就開始臭我了?
除此之外 也要進軍勃X功能障礙藥物市場
每月收費 19 美元 各位應該是負擔的起
(我是花不到這個錢)
儘管亞馬遜涉足醫療保健業務的成效 參差不齊
但這次 依然會給其他競爭對手 造成不小威脅
首先是價格 硬是比其他對手便宜
其次是亞馬遜的規模與通路
確實有可能 在當今這個 沒有一家佔據主導地位的行業
主導該行業的部分領域。
更重要的 這次的競爭對手
遠沒有過去試圖挑戰的管理醫療公司
和零售藥房連鎖店那麼強大
也因此 雖然不知道會取得多大成功 但威脅已造成
消息公佈後，Hims & Hers 的股價下跌了 22%
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