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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.
âoeAnyone with an entire cardâ is way more than Medicaid. Itâ(TM)s also the bums that donâ(TM)t work because they canâ(TM)t find a job they âoelikeâ.
The folks that use the entire for food and still have cash for lotto tickets and cigarettes. Great move amazon. Punish the working class by giving special treatment to the bum class.
$6x12 = $72. That saves me $27 a year. You are spending those billions in tax savings wisely! See THIS is what trickle down economics looks like! It trickled all over me.
It's basically a case of "you don't get a discount because you're not poor enough and live in the wrong country"
You have the NHS. Why don't you just shut your whine-hole?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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For Alexa to laugh at.
And I thought my gut instinct to the article was right leaning.
That poor people make poor money choices, so giving medicaid patients (given to struggling people) they will spend more on things that do not have a long term value, trinkets that will give an immediate satisfaction, vs long term pleasure. Is this a gross stereotype? Yes, yes it is. However it is a normal trend that could be taken advantage of. Because on the more altruistic view of this. These people may not be able to have ready transport to the city for shopping, or to the local Bigbox Mart, and products such as cleaning supplies, and personal hygiene products are often not covered by welfare programs. So services such as free shipping of such products is probably a strong benefit.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
All this is, is discrimination dressed up as assistance.What if i live in the UK and am on benefits. Do i get a discount? What if i have a delibitating terminal disease? How about if i'm a paraplegic? It's basically a case of "you don't get a discount because you're not poor enough and live in the wrong country"
And you're also being discriminated against because you don't live in that one place whedre Amazon is running a checkout-free test store.
So you're buying a hospital visit for the flu, would you like to add an additional warranty for $10?
>implying people make good decisions
People on government assistance are there precisely because they can't make good decisions. McDonald's immediate gratification or reasonably-priced Whole Foods (HA!) for better meals you have to cook?
If they're working 12 hours a day on their feet at $7.50/hr, they might be too fucking tired to shop or cook. Mickey Dee's might be less of a choice, more of a necessity so they don't pass out. Assuming they have a working stove and fridge, even.
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.
I think what you meant to say is that Amazon is working on a medical support and delivery program, and is even making money collecting information on future clients who will be able to pay for medical services via their Medicaid EBT information. A win-win for Amazon.
Is this any more discriminatory than (say) a student discount in a museum?
It's clearly no charity.... this is Discriminatory pricing plain and simple.
Attempting to encourage people who probably shouldn't be spending what little money they have on
entertainment to buy a service they probably should not be buying.
If it were for "charity", they'd be giving it away at $0.... instead they're still tryiing to Profit, and people with more income pay them more, so it's a form of unfair pricing for services, AND they're on dangerous ground to be discriminating based on participation in a government program ---- technically the government is NOT to allow their programs to be used in such manner.
That poor people make poor money choices, so giving medicaid patients (given to struggling people) they will spend more on things that do not have a long term value, trinkets that will give an immediate satisfaction, vs long term pleasure. Is this a gross stereotype? Yes, yes it is.
Actually, no it is not. $100 on an EBT card will get you $50-$60 cash on the black market . . . which you can spend on whatever you want.
The mere existence of this thriving market indicates . . . well . . . that lots of folks are doing it.
A more interesting question . . . is if Amazon permits or assists in such EBT card hanky-panky. Can you spend money from your EBT card, that is meant for diapers, to pay for tech junk . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So I work hard and am not on public assistance, and Amazon wants to punish me with higher prices for that?
I call bullshit
Probably not. You have to charge EBT for a qualified good. There are technical barriers to buying random stuff, and circumvention by a merchant will get regulatory enforcement up your ass immediately.
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So, they're trying to build a user-base among those who most struggle with health care: The old and poor.
They offer the discount for SNAP and medicaid folks, not for seniors. So your premise is flawed. Where is my old people discount?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The merchant needn't be involved. Buy the good, resell for cash at 50% discount immediately to someone outside the store.
Using Amazon and having to wait for shipping/deal with mis-delivered stuff is punishment in itself. I'm not a hermit, I prefer brick-n-mortar when possible.
I agree that welfare is sort of unfair, what with both requiring you to have low income and refusing to provide any benefit until you have run down your liquid assets (you have to burn through your life's savings first), while also having you pay taxes in.
As such, I have developed a new program which we can implement without raising taxes. This program stabilizes Social Security (permanently), creates a new baseline for minimum wage ($9.75 in 2024, which compounds with the Dividend benefit to equate to a $15.11/hr wage), and pays out to all adults. It's funded by a FICA tax on all income (corporate and personal), so it grows with every productivity growth, thus faster than COLA.
Under this program, middle-income households actually receive a benefit--and in total this comes out to be a reduction in tax burden, compared with today. The tax load is still higher than just cutting the program entirely; it only reduces the cost today, and pays back at least part of your tax obligation in the form of a benefit. Thus you benefit from the participation, immediately.
Lifting up the lowest-income households reduces their need for assistance, which helps to lower the cost of public assistance programs and improve their reach. We can tune them to reach more children in low-income households, or reduce our deficits, or even reduce taxes further. The increased buying power of lower- and middle-income households creates jobs, as well--especially in more-impoverished areas--which further lifts people from poverty and gets them off assistance, freeing up Federal, State, and Local funds for economic development and other programs of benefit to the greater community.
Besides stabilizing households and reducing the tax burden, reducing the utilization of public assistance should also reduce the number of discounted Amazon Prime subscriptions, thus allowing Amazon to charge a lower base rate.
It's amazing what the careful application of well-regulated capitalism can do.
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I suspect that Amazon would be at a comparative disadvantage in playing black marketeer. You don't run an operation of their size without keeping accurate records, otherwise various flavors of fraud not in your favor or sheer inefficiency and confusion would cause things to grind to a halt; and they are a large, obvious, target with a lot to lose if caught.
Now, will their UI make it super easy(or just default to) auto-apply EBT to eligible items in the cart and use a presentation of the result very similar to what you would see if gift cards/rebates/etc. covered those items to give you a feeling of having 'saved' and encourage you to feel that you can afford to add an extra widget or two? That seems much more likely.
I think the chip on your shoulder is warping your perspective. Amazon isn't interested in punishment or your sense of victimized moral superiority.
It's an economic commonplace that price discrimination is in the seller's interest if they can accurately assess the willingness to pay and demand elasticity of their various customers. Doing so perfectly is generally impossible; but more and less granular attempts market segmentation are ubiquitous.
Here, Amazon has a very convenient market segmentation signal neatly implemented for them: a collection of poor customers, presumably less likely to purchase Prime at full price, with eligibility standards and enforcement provided by the state or the feds; and (at least in the case of WIC EBT, not sure about medicaid) a purchasing mechanism built in that is quite similar to other payment cards in terms of processing. What's not to like, from Amazon's perspective?
Should we establish a Department of Virtuous Labor to enact regulations to prevent market actors from doing things, even voluntarily and in their economic interests, that might result in lower prices for filthy poors, to avoid this moral outrage?
Yes, but that happens anywhere you go.
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Actual scheme I've encountered in real life:
1. Get "government cheese" (any kind of food from government assistance).
2. Feed government cheese to white rats.
3. Sell white rats to labs.
4. Profit!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Actually it's called price discrimination and is an ages-old pricing strategy.
Real life is overrated.
Confusion leading to frustration and anger... senility? Syphilis? (Statistically unlikely...) Perhaps too much caffeine+HFCS??
Hmm...I've had pretty much nothing but GREAT experiences with Amazon.
I find what I want, it gets shipped to me in 2 days and prices are usually better than I find locally.
And even with amazon charging sales tax....if you find a 3rd party on Amazon selling it, you usually get same shipping and no charge of sales tax which is nice.
Before Amazon started collecting sales tax, it was REALLY a great deal, especially on large ticket items.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
2 day shipping for $0 monthly cost for everyone.
So I work hard and am not on public assistance, and Amazon wants to punish me with higher prices for that?
I call bullshit
Screw Amazon. Walmart.com has 2 day free shipping /w ZERO membership dues.
Most of the time they are pretty fast with the shipping like that
We've had a few times where Walmart took a week longer than that on shipping
Not in Medicaid-expansion states -- there's no asset test, only income below 133% of poverty line.
At the same time the Prime owner gets free music, free TV shows/movies(so less money they "need" to spend on cable)
Without cable, how does the Prime subscriber connect to the Internet in the first place, especially people who live outside the service footprint of fiber? If you meant a subscription to cable Internet without TV, consider that many pay TV subscribers subscribe to pay TV solely because the cable company charges less for a bundle of home Internet and basic TV service than for home Internet alone.
To get on Medicaid you have to either A. afford to move to a Medicaid-expansion state or B. spend down all your assets to practically nothing.
Walmart doesn't ship milk. Although the Amazon listings for Milk are mostly scammy looking. Walmart has much better prices on powdered milk and shelf stable milk products.
Cheap storage VM.
Yeah those poor ill people get all the breaks. What is this shit?