Privacy, antitrust, and other advocates sounded the alarm over Amazon’s purchase of boutique healthcare company One Medical, a move that one group said “opens a terrifying new frontier in surveillance of Americans by private corporations,” Common Dreams reports.
CNBC reports Amazon is acquiring One Medical, a San Francisco-based private health services provider with 188 locations whose 767,000 members pay around $200 in annual concierge fees, for about $3.9 billion, or $18 per share.
Neil Lindsay, Amazon’s senior vice president of health services, told The Washington Post—which is owned by Amazon multi-billionaire founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos—that “we think healthcare is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention.”
However, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted: “The function of a rational healthcare system is to provide quality care to all in a cost-effective way, not make billionaires like Jeff Bezos even richer. At a time of growing concentration of ownership, the Justice Department must deny Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical.”
Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute (OMI), an anti-monopoly think tank, asserted in a statement that “U.S. enforcement agencies should block this deal.” Read more.
