Amazon Is the Hospital Now | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Is the Hospital Now

clinic.amazon.com

25 pointsswayvil20 comments

> Trusted security: Your medical information is always protected

Nothing more than that on their FAQ page [1] - but that's the first thing one should be interested in: where will that data end up, and how will it be used? Will you now get blasted by sponsored products for, say, vitamin supplements or fitness gear after you've been diagnosed with malnutrition or obesity?

And there's an even worse point in this: Amazon is already utterly, utterly dominant in online shopping, has a massive presence in cloud computing (made possible, in part, by the lackluster competition), is threatening to "go big" in physical retail as well [2]... just how much of our economy, of our daily lives, are we going to give to Amazon? Do we really want an Avatar-style economy, with a few select mega-corporations controlling every single aspect of our lives? How long until Amazon starts rolling out their own health insurance, made "cheaper" by abusing all your Amazon Shopping data to determine if you're living healthy enough by (blackbox) Amazon standards (judged by a blackbox AI) to be worthy of even being admitted? Can such judgements be appealed in front of a legitimate court of law, or will you (once again) be facing a giant corporation's useless helpdesk that only responds with boilerplate?

Yes, I'm drawing a bit of a dystopia here, but this kind of behavior is already common in automotive insurance, so it's only a question of time until it arrives in healthcare.

[1] https://clinic.amazon.com/help

[2] https://www.chargedretail.co.uk/2023/02/28/amazon-physical-r...

I don't think this is dystopia at all. Many of your points are valid, and I believe that far too few people consider them.

From their FAQ: "We'll never sell your information to anyone and we don’t use your personal health information to market or advertise other products available on Amazon.com."

If I were... Evil... I would have chosen the word "don't" instead of "won't", so Amazon could change their mind on some arbitrary day, delete the part that says they don't use it for marketing... and just like that... tens of thousands of Alexas are advertising herpes meds at inconvenient times.

Data breaches are also a bit more... concerning... with medical information.

Lots of online data on how Amazon's revenue is in line with the GDP of the top 10-15 countries on the planet. This boggles my mind. When I see projects such as this my mind immediately references all the dystopian fiction stories I've seen and read where tyrannical corporations control everything.

They aren't comparable metrics. Revenue doesn't represent value added. I can sell a $20 bill for $20, my revenue is $20 but there is no impact on GDP (nothing has been created, no value has been added). Do that enough times and you too can have revenue equaling that of a small country.

Remember that while these types of dystopias are bad for most people, for some they are utopias. Amazon being an all powerful unaccountable infinite money machine is Jeff Bezo's utopia, for example.

Isn't it weird that Amazon is economically efficient because of central planning, but nations aren't?

Incentives

Not really. Amazon is trying to be efficient, nations are not.

fiction?

Our workers are peeing into bottles, is there a way we can monetize this?

2 years later...

Was very interested to see what Amazon could do with healthcare, looking at the page the first thing that popped in my head: https://scifiinterfaces.com/2018/10/12/st-gods-intake/

As much as I dislike Amazon, I think this is good. Hopefully, blue chew ads will disappear.

Pricing is reasonable and some conditions can definitely treated this way.

I honestly won’t be surprised if this eventually does have an affect on other providers.

If I needed ED pills this would be cheaper than paying my copay.

Starts out competitively priced and high quality. Whatch in a few years as they gain market share. Quality will drop and price will rise

There will be an employee discount. Amazon will also offer cheap housing. Do they own farms yet?

I ... like this?

I know "le bald guy is bad" (is he?), but that aside the current healthcare UX is abysmally terrible and anything/anyone that at least provides an alternative to it is very welcome on my side.

Well since anti-trust has been fully captured I guess we'll have to rely on...the free-market? Better late than never I guess.

As Phil says in Groundhog Day, "Anything different is good."

Hmm... Frowning... Good? What's the catch?

Perhaps this one: after having paid something, you will still get massively overpriced bills later?

What's Amazon's advantage or strategic interest in this space as a retail & web infrastructure giant?

Buy N Large

Reply on news.ycombinator.com