Walmart's push into healthcare, SoftBank's struggles, and why FedEx dumped Amazon
Walmart, America's biggest retailer, this week opened a health clinic that has primary care, dentistry, and counseling services. As we reported this week, that's just the start.
Zach Tracer and Lydia Ramsey talked to Sean Slovenski, Walmart's president of health and wellness, to get the skinny on the company's plans to wade deeper into the massive $3.5 trillion US healthcare system.
As they report, the retailer opened a health clinic in Dallas, Georgia, on Friday. It plans to open another in Calhoun, Georgia. If everything goes well, Walmart could soon be the largest provider of basic healthcare in the region.
The goal, according to Slovenski, is to do for healthcare what Walmart's supercenter stores did for retail. As Zach and Lydia report:
Slovenski said Walmart planned to offer the doctor visits, dental cleanings, and lab tests at prices that are about 30 to 50% below what people have been paying, in part by cutting out middlemen when possible and using Walmart's massive size to negotiate. The clinics will also take insurance, he said.
It's just the latest example of the boundaries in healthcare blurring:
- CVS, which last year acquired health insurer Aetna, wants to change where millions of Americans go when they get sick, for example. Lydia spoke to CVS chief marketing officer Norman de Greve about how it plans to do it.
- Ancestry, the family-history website, is preparing for a big move into healthcare, an area the 36-year-old firm has largely avoided. Lydia reported that the private-equity-owned company has been recruiting a health team as it prepares for a move that could put it in competition with 23andMe.
- Amazon-owned online pharmacy PillPack is waging a battle with health-data company Surescripts over access to the prescription history data that Surescripts collects. The spat highlights a big fight over your private health information. The question is: who should have access to a patient's prescription history?
- Kroger, America's largest grocery chain, is betting that it can get paid to keep you healthy with food rather than pills. We talked to Allison Baker, the director of nutrition at Kroger, where she oversees a team of dieticians and looks at how the biggest US grocery chain can change people's eating habits to help them get healthier.
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