Amazon Launches a Low-Cost Version of Prime For Medicaid Recipients (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon announced this morning it will offer a low-cost version of its Prime membership program to qualifying recipients of Medicaid. The program will bring the cost of Prime down from the usual $12.99 per month to about half that, at $5.99 per month, while still offering the full range of Prime perks, including free, two-day shipping on millions of products, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Photos, Prime Reading, Prime Now, Audible Channels, and more. The new program is an expansion on Amazon's discounted Prime service for customers on government assistance, launched in June 2017. For the same price of $5.99 per month, Amazon offers Prime memberships to any U.S. customer with a valid EBT card -- the card that's used to disburse funds for assistance programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC). Now that same benefit is arriving for recipients of Medicaid, the public assistance program providing medical coverage to low-income Americans. To qualify for the discount, customers must have a valid EBT or Medicaid card, the retailer says.

Comments

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[Anonymous Coward]

Although, this time, it's being used for good!

Amazon is looking to get into the health-care business, right? So, they're trying to build a user-base among those who most struggle with health care: The old and poor. Amazon is embracing the Medicaid program within its current domain of expertise; next, Amazon will extend its expertise to include health care management; then, Amazon will work with governments to extinguish the public program, and we can be free once and for all from the ineptitude of governmental control.

From the description, it looks like Amazon might have the same idea for the other aspects of the welfare state. Why bother challenging the governmental programs when you can just infiltrate and then subsume them? Bezos is a genius.

Re:Discrimination

[Gavagai80]

It's simply "here's a group of people we can be sure aren't willing to pay our full price, so we'll offer them a lower price and hope some buy." They don't have to offer the lower price to everyone who can't afford their full price, because this isn't a charity, it's business strategy.