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ONE MEDICAL UPDATE

One Medical, whose parent company 1Life Healthcare trades under the ticker ONEM, went public in 2020. The Carlyle Group has been one of One Medical's key investors, and is reportedly set to exit after Amazon's acquisition. The company's focus is on primary care and boasts virtually no wait times, and in its IPO filing expressed interest in moving into behavioral health. locations and more than 750,000 members, as of a May filing. One Medical's $199 annual subscription offers 24/7 access to telehealth services, same-day appointments, and an app. The company had reportedly been fielding takeover interest from giants like CVS ( CVS). So, why One Medical? To start, One Medical - which was founded in 2007 and focuses on so-called concierge primary care - was on the market.

The deal marks one of Amazon's most high-profile pushes into health care to date. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wrote an open letter asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the deal, saying: “Amazon has a history of engaging in business practices that raise serious anticompetitive concerns.Amazon ( AMZN) announced today that it would acquire subscription health care provider One Medical for $3.9 billion. “The antitrust agencies will be looking very closely at this.” But for all the talk of reining in Big Tech, Washington lately hasn’t been very successful at doing it.

ONE MEDICAL UPDATE

What, if anything, is the government going to do to protect patients in a world of these kinds of horizontal megamergers? Will it update our aging health privacy law? Will it put any limits on how Amazon manages patient data? “This is not a done deal,” Mitchell said.

In its news release announcing the deal, Amazon quoted executive Neil Lindsay saying that “we see lots of opportunity to both improve the quality of the experience and give people back valuable time in their days.” Is Amazon going to start treating doctors like its fulfillment-center workers, whose days are monitored down to the minute and squeezed for efficiency? That sounds like an awful doctor’s visit, even if Amazon is more efficient on the time-wasting bits like sitting in the waiting room. “Putting patients first may mean resisting subpoenas, or conversely reporting gunshot wounds or abuse,” Caplan said. Medicine isn’t an ordinary business: Now Amazon has a duty of care.

How does Amazon plan to ensure doctors and nurses can live up to their ethical responsibilities? Neither it nor One Medical answered my question.

I’m especially wary of Amazon trying to lure patients to hand over their data to the e-commerce giant in exchange for discounts or even - just imagine - an Alexa-based telemedicine service. “I’m worried that the combination of a huge product distributor and marketer with sensitive health data could lead to a tsunami of targeted advertising that you probably don’t want,” Caplan said. But HIPAA wasn’t written for the internet age as I’ve found again and again, lots of companies find completely legal ways to grab intimate health data for marketing and other purposes with “consent” few patients realized they were giving.

Will Amazon commit to putting up a firewall between patient data and Amazon’s many other tentacles? Amazon spokesman Dan Perlet emailed, “As required by law, Amazon will never share One Medical customers’ personal health information outside of One Medical for advertising or marketing purposes of other Amazon products and services without clear permission from the customer.” But the devil is in the details of that last phrase: Yes, America has a health privacy law called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Alas, One Medical didn’t even email patients about the news on Thursday. One Medical should have a big patient town hall where it talks about this and answers our questions. Surely Amazon has enough MBAs of its own - we need a doctor protecting our interests.

Will Amazon commit to having a physician in charge of One Medical? Amazon said One Medical’s current CEO, Amir Dan Rubin, who is not a doctor, will continue running it.