Amazon Offers Unlimited Generic Prescriptions for $5 Monthly Fee
- Amazon launched RxPass, a $5-a-month subscription for Prime members to have generic prescriptions delivered.
- It’s Amazon’s latest foray into health care after it launched Amazon Pharmacy in 2020.
- The service offers customers any medications from its list of 50.
This week, Amazon launched RxPass, a new add-on service available to its Prime customers, offering unlimited prescription delivery.
The e-commerce retailer announced RxPass in a Jan. 24 release as part of Amazon Pharmacy, which launched in 2020 — two years after it acquired online pharmacy PillPack. The RxPass service became available in most states in the U.S. starting Tuesday, the retailer said.
For a $5 monthly charge, Amazon says Prime members can get access to unlimited deliveries of their prescribed generic medications. “There are no hidden fees and no markups to the $5 per month subscription,” according to the retailer. The $5 monthly fee covers the delivery and cost for any medications needed from Amazon Pharmacy’s list of 50 generic medications.
Existing Prime customers can enroll in the new service using Amazon’s mobile app or its website, according to the release. There, they’ll begin a sign-up process that determines their eligibility and verifies their prescription information, the retailer said. Amazon noted that customers can call an Amazon pharmacist at any time of day or night should they have questions about a prescription before or after they receive it.
“Any customer who pays more than $10 a month for their eligible medications will see their prescription costs drop by 50% or more, plus they save time by skipping a trip to the pharmacy,” said John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy, in the release. “We are excited to offer our customers surprisingly simple, low pricing on the eligible medications they need each month.”
Amazon in the release said the flat-fee service could be particularly valuable to people who don’t have prescription insurance, and it noted that Prime members could alternatively get savings of up to 80% on generic medications and 40% on name-brand medications at more than 60,000 pharmacies in the U.S.
The move is the latest push into the health care industry for the e-commerce retailer. In addition to launching Amazon Pharmacy two years ago, Amazon last year entered an agreement to purchase One Medical, a chain of primary care boutique clinics, in a $3.9 billion cash deal.
Not every foray into the health care space has resulted in success for Amazon. Last year it shuttered AmazonCare, its in-person health care and telehealth service it built initially for its own employees but later expanded to other corporate customers, The Washington Post reported.
“Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term,” said Neil Lindsay, Amazon senior vice president of health, in an email to staff last year, according to the report.
Amazon is looking to shift some of its priorities amid economic headwinds that have impacted the tech and retail industries. Amazon plans to cut 18,000 positions this year, and it already in January shuttered its AmazonSmile charitable donation program.