Stocks of Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens lost nearly $13 billion in value by midday on Thursday after Amazon announced its plan to buy online pharmacy PillPack.
Industry observers have long said it was a matter of when, not if, the retail giant would enter the health care sector — and some are saying consumers could be the real winners.
Amazon’s ubiquity in a growing number of consumer-goods categories facilitates the ability for the company to mount an immediate challenge to traditional pharmacies — and last year, Amazon obtained pharmacy distribution licenses in at least a dozen states, leading analysts to speculate at the time what the company planned to do.
