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>Amazon is going to buy drugs in major bulk (Walmart, or Mail-order-pharmacy style)

All pharmacies, electronic and brick-and-mortar, go through one of 3 wholesalers: Cardinal, AmerisourceBergen, or Mckesson. It's, "which retailer can drive distribution?"

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Speaking from the US, it's too bad that pharmacists are so disempowered here. I was just in France, and my friend came down with an eye infection. He went to a pharmacist, who just gave him antibiotics and told him to come back in three days if it didn't go away.

We both agreed it would never have been so easy in the states.

While I agree that kind of ease of access to an Rx that would have otherwise required a doctor’s office visit sounds great, antibiotics is probably a bad example. Over-prescription of antibiotics is a known problem. Was your friend seen by a PA or nurse or something? Maybe that model makes sense but I hesitate to give pharmacists the added power of diagnosis.

If Amazon enters the pharmacy business is there any reason they couldn't bypass the wholesalers and buy directly from pharmaceutical companies?

No. To be clear, I don't make these regulatory decisions, I'm just relaying the reality of the situation. It's very difficult to have these discussions with people that don't even know the basics about the industry under discussion.

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