John,
Amazon wants to establish a healthcare industry monopoly. They took a big step by making a deal to acquire health provider One Medical for a whopping $3.9 billion.1
The research is unequivocal: health industry consolidation leads to higher prices for consumers — without ensuring better care.
Sign the petition: The Federal Trade Commission must thoroughly investigate Amazon's health care mergers and stop Amazon from becoming a health care monopoly!
Sign the petition »
The Amazon – One Medical merger is bad news for health access in the United States and bad news for the economy. The merger may also be illegal under current anti-monopoly laws. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has moved to investigate the merger — but we need to make sure there's a thorough investigation and that the FTC enforces antitrust laws in this case.2
Amazon’s record raises serious concerns about the tech giant providing healthcare. Amazon has a long history of crushing its competitors and capitalizing on and abusing our data.
What’s more, this move is likely to accelerate the devastating Medicare privatization process currently underway.3 Under Medicare privatization, Medicare recipients get involuntarily assigned to private health plans. Those for-profit companies make more money if their Medicare clients receive less healthcare — in other words, they have an incentive to block older and disabled Americans from accessing healthcare.
Many Americans already pay too much for bad healthcare4 — and our economy is already dominated by Amazon and other Big Tech giants.
Not only would Amazon have too much market power with One Medical under its belt, it also would have a frightening degree of informational power. Should we trust Amazon with our private health data which could easily be abused to discriminate against consumers on the basis of health conditions? Absolutely not.
Sign the petition: Tell the FTC to thoroughly investigate the Amazon – One Medical merger for potential anticompetitive effects and privacy violations! We must stop Amazon from becoming a health care monopoly.
Thank you for your support,
LeftNet
Sources:
1. "Amazon to acquire One Medical clinics in latest push into health care," New York Times, July 21, 2022.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/business/amazon-one-medical-deal.html
2. “Weeks after Lina Khan’s FTC opens investigation of Amazon for One Medical deal, it probes acquisition of Roomba maker iRobot,” Fortune, September 21, 2022.https://fortune.com/2022/09/21/amazon-irobot-acquisition-ftc-lina-khan-roomba-one-medical/
3. “Amazon Joins The Medicare Privatization Spree,” Lever News, July 22, 2022.https://www.levernews.com/amazon-joins-the-medicare-privatization-spree/
4. “U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2019: Higher Spending, Worse Outcomes?,” Lever News, January 30, 2020.https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019
