Please consider Hospitals Fear Competitive Threat From Potential Walmart-Humana Deal.
Hospitals have been eyeing Walmart nervously for years as it advances into health care, seeking to leverage its enormous purchasing heft, physical reach and focus on price. The Bentonville, Ark., retailer already operates pharmacies and primary-care clinics and plans to begin offering lab-testing services. It has also recently increased its direct negotiations with hospitals for competitive prices on some procedures for its employees.
A deal isn’t guaranteed. But a merger could add to the wave of consolidation in U.S. health care, pairing insurers with other sectors of the industry that offer cheaper care through clinics and pharmacies. CVS Health Corp. announced last year a $69 billion deal for insurer Aetna Inc. Cigna Corp. early last month said it would buy Express Scripts Holding Co. for $54 billion, in a combination that would marry a health insurer and the largest U.S. pharmacy-benefit manager.
Walmart operates 19 clinics in Georgia, South Carolina and Texas and other providers operate about 50 additional clinics. But Walmart’s expansive retail footprint would make it a formidable competitor should it build out low-cost outpatient offerings, said industry executives and consultants.
A potential Walmart-Humana deal “should be a concern to everybody in health care,” said Randy Oostra, president and chief executive officer of nonprofit hospital system ProMedica, based in Toledo, Ohio. “What worries us is death by a thousand cuts,” he said. “Another deal and another deal.”
Concern for Everybody?
No, it’s not a concern for “everybody”.
It’s a concern for everybody that that fears competition.
Here’s a simple rule: If it’s good for consumers, it’s a welcome event.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
How about health CARE (as opposed to insurance, see the difference) delivered through venues different than the traditional hospital system? No one will be having abdominal surgery at Walmart, but already they have a lot of generic drugs cheaper than what one gets charged using one’s insurance card. Immunizations on the cheap also. Now even doctors stitching people up and prescribing. I see something like this as being revolutionary and perhaps the path to having catastrophic health insurance plans being a viable idea….have all of the low level stuff be AFFORDABLE and done outside of the claims system. I’m sick of hearing about people going bankrupt from one trip to the ER for what should have been a cheap procedure.
Problem is, Walmart doesn’t enjoy the mindshare amongst the regulating classes to shape regulation the way the medical, pharma and insurance industries do. The regulating classes don’t shop at Walmart, after all.
One of the biggest potential boons of Trump blowing NAFTA apart, would be the ability of Mexican registered insurers to sell insurance to Americans. Initially Mexican Americans with roots family in the “Old Country.” But with experience, there’s little reason it couldn’t be expanded to cover other groups.
Aside from bullying and pressure, there’s not much in the way of a good reason why Canada couldn’t help subsidize their National health service, by making a small margin on Americans coming there for treatment as well. They’d be helping their own citizens out by having others pick up part of their health care tab. While helping their neighbors out by providing generally equivalent service for below US prices. That’s what’s called a win-win, for those not hopelessly indoctrinated.
Faced with genuine competitive pressures from either or both above, I have little doubt US providers would roll up their sleeves and compete. But absent any competition, it’s just easier for them to pay regulators and politicians to help them rent seek like the rest of the US privileged classes.
Alas, that is one reason why Trump’s talk of blowing NAFTA apart will never amount to more than hot air.
you can comment on union workers at MCDs when there are none. Seeing the dysfunction of our healthcare does not require citizenship. $hit in this land has a $ sign not a *
cmon MntGoat
Yeah you are not American. So you don’t know sh*t about the American health care system as you have displayed. And you have no clue if Trump will make it worse as you said.
Why do you think Obama did any better with health care? No one I know that has ACA and actually pays for it (including myself), likes it. You I am sure have never had it and get all your opinions on it from the biased liberal media. All ACA did was get rid of denial for pre-existing conditions, but then it DOUBLED (sometimes more) the cost of monthly insurance premiums and deductibles for self-employed people above the poverty line . I thought ACA was a fairly shoddy, over hyped piece of legislation that did NOTHING to deal with the REAL problems in American Health Care…that is why is health care so ridiculously expensive in USA??? Why is pricing for procedures so NON transparent? ACA did nothing to address this!
Yep. The combination of health insurance and profits has proved to be a disaster. Now, a bigger disaster is in the making. But hope (or is it greed?) springs eternal in the hearts of the tinkering status quoists.
I worked for 30 years in the health insurance industry. I can’t think of a more disparate coupling than health insurance and retail. If this happens it will be a disaster.
It’s a proposal, not a deal. There are questions that cannot be answered until there is an actual deal. It is tween Walmart and Humana now to explain.
Will the Walmart employees receiving Medicaid support be able to access these facilities?! Or is this open only to those with other insurance?!
Hospitals in US are a gargantuan bureaucracy with 100s of redundancies and maze of coding
If Amazon & Walmart get in the room others better lookout
There is an elephant in the room which is the Tout based extortion syndicate
Interesting times indeed
One can only hope and dream the next industry to get disintermediated is the corrupt, inefficient health care and hospital cartels in America.
If hospitals fear Walmart than I fully support the Walmart-Humana deal. 100%.