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[basserdan]

Walmart Is Quietly Turning Healthcare on Its Head

By Stephen McBride
September 27, 2019

(Excerpted - read entire article at link below)

What Makes an Industry Ripe for Disruption?
My team and I set out to figure out what makes an industry “disruptable.”

For the most part, it all comes down to the difference between the price you pay for something and what you get for it. Too big a gap means an industry is ripe for disruption.

Take cable TV. From 1998 to 2013, the price of cable TV more than doubled. Yet TV didn’t change all that much. You still watched the news on NBC or Fox…

Still, cable companies like Comcast (CMCSA) kept hiking prices year after year.

When prices surge without much improvement in quality, it attracts disruptors like a moth to a flame.

Of course, Netflix (NFLX) came along and wiped the floor with cable companies.

Over 35 million Americans have dumped cable TV in the past five years. Meanwhile, Netflix now has more subscribers than the largest five cable companies combined!

In this regard, healthcare is practically BEGGING to be disrupted.

As I said, healthcare premiums have shot up 275% since 2000. While there have been major breakthroughs like gene testing and 3D-printed body parts led by disruptive companies like Illumina (ILMN), they have little to do with the cost of delivering healthcare.

Believe it or not, America’s largest retailer, Walmart (WMT), is my top choice to disrupt healthcare.

“Walmart Health” Is Disrupting America’s Most Broken Industry
“Walmart Health” opened its first location next to Walmart's retail store in Dallas, Georgia this past week.

Walmart Health is essentially a mini-hospital. You can now walk in and get basic medical services like a doctor’s checkup, your teeth cleaned, an X-ray, a hearing test, and vaccines.

And here’s the kicker: Walmart is charging between 30–50% less for these services than hospitals do.

Besides disrupting the grocery industry, Walmart aims to “unbundle” the healthcare industry.

All types of medical services are lumped into health insurance today. We pay giant premiums that cover everything from major surgery like a hip replacement, right down to something that should be routine, simple, and cheap—like a flu shot.

With everything “bundled” under one insurance policy, nobody really knows what anything costs. Say you get a blood test at the hospital. Do you know if its going to cost you $300... $1,000... or $3,000?

Chances are you don’t. Chances are you have no clue how much you owe until you get a bill in the mail.

Name another industry that works like that. Name another industry where the pricing is so arbitrary and opaque.

I expect Walmart Health and similar services to crack the healthcare “bundle” wide open.

Soon most folks will get their basic services at a local health clinic—like a Walmart Health. These local clinics won’t have ties to large hospital networks and insurance companies. And they will cost a fraction of what routine healthcare costs today.

Walmart is a Jedi-master at slashing unnecessary costs. For example, in 2006 it launched a line of generic prescription drugs, each costing $4. Today, it runs one of the biggest pharmacies in the US with $35 billion in sales last year.

https://www.riskhedge.com/outplacement/walmart-is-quietly-turning-healthcare-on-its-head