Dive Brief:
- Amazon has discounted the price of a One Medical membership for users of its Prime subscription program, a move that could further integrate the retail giant’s healthcare ambitions with its core e-commerce business.
- Amazon announced Wednesday that Prime members can sign up for One Medical for $9 a month, or $99 a year. That’s $100 off the normal yearly cost of membership at the primary care network. Prime members can also add additional memberships for $6 per person, per month.
- Amazon acquired One Medical for $3.9 billion last summer. At the time, experts said the company could weave One Medical deeper into Amazon’s existing businesses through a Prime-specific subscription model.
Dive Insight:
One Medical operates a network of hundreds of primary care clinics across the U.S. Along with in-person care, the provider offers virtual care, including video calls with providers or care triage in its app. Memberships run $199 a year for non-Prime members.
Amazon made One Medical available to Prime members at a limited-time discount in February this year, when the acquisition closed. Now, the steeper — and permanent — discount could signal Amazon is interested in getting more Prime members to sign up.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to share the number of Prime members who have joined One Medical to date, instead pointing to One Medical’s last public earnings at the end of 2022, when the company had 836,000 members overall.
But “One Medical and Amazon see this as an exciting next step to bring One Medical’s high-quality primary care to more people,” the spokesperson said.
In a Wednesday release, Amazon stressed One Medical’s breadth of virtual care offerings. The company’s clinics are concentrated in major cities, so many of Amazon’s more than 200 million Prime members would only have access to One Medical’s telehealth capabilities if they sign up.
Amazon operates another telehealth marketplace, called Amazon Clinic, where users get connected to third-party vendors for non-emergent needs. Amazon Clinic, unlike One Medical, does not accept insurance. The marketplace has faced concerns about data privacy, as users waive certain privacy rights to use the service. Data privacy worries also beleaguered Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical, though regulators declined to challenge the deal.
Along with Amazon Clinic and One Medical, Amazon also operates an online pharmacy, called Amazon Pharmacy. The e-commerce behemoth has tried to make Amazon Pharmacy more tempting for Prime members through generics subscriptions and a Prime prescriptions savings benefit, though uptake has reportedly been slow, according to a Morgan Stanley survey cited by Insider last year.
Amazon is elbowing into the healthcare market with mixed success. Not all of its ventures have panned out: The company shut down its hybrid care offering for employers, called Amazon Care, at the end of 2022, after flagging demand. Another high-profile effort to lower healthcare costs, called Haven, flamed out in 2021.
