Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?