Health is priceless. For everything else, there is a subscription plan. In a world where we can no longer afford anything, life in permanent rental is becoming the solution to a few too many problems…
It’s big news, basically, which was made a little quietly by Amazon last week: for five US dollars a month, American consumers who already pay US $15 each month to subscribe to its loyalty service Prime will be able to have one or another of approximately 60 prescription drugs delivered in unlimited quantities every month.
In one market, the United States, where annual spending per household on drugs and other health care is, at US$12,300 (C$16,380), just over double the average for other countries in the world. (which is US$5,800 (CAN$7,724), which is also the average amount paid each year in Canada), is quite a boon for the 150 million Americans who already buy the drugs included in this offer. .
For Amazon, it’s a tactic that has already proven its worth: selling popular products at a lower price to establish itself as the eventual main player in a targeted market, and then controlling prices and margins. what Amazon has been doing since its beginnings as a simple online bookseller.
The past two years have accelerated the digital shift in healthcare. Unsurprisingly, this is a shift that is mainly for the benefit of the private sector, everywhere in the world, including in Canada and Quebec.
The subscription economy
The tech industry has been talking about the “subscription economy” for a few years. Obviously, the whole entertainment sector took the leap years ago: television, music, video games… Most people rent a car that they replace every four, five or eight years without stopping to pay.
At the price at which the houses are selling, one has the impression that one will never see the end of one’s mortgage. It’s not so different from being a tenant, when you think that the bank remains the owner of your home until you have reimbursed the last penny…
Obviously, this model suits businesses. It is easier for them to make forecasts and reassure shareholders about their future income when their clients pay an amount each month which, in addition, can be increased at any time without notice. The financial horizon is less predictable when selling products and services for a single payment…
The public is less convinced. The firm Deloitte published a report on this subject, last summer, according to which a majority of consumers prefer to pay once and become owners of their acquisition, rather than “renting” it in exchange for a fixed monthly payment ( or not).
Watch out for your credit cards!
The new wave of adoption of the subscription model is more daring: it goes to the heart of services that until now were reserved for the public sector. Health, of course, and also education.
Microsoft and Google are bickering with Apple to sell their tablets to schools around the world. They are also going out of their way to impose their applications in an “educational” version on the school network according to a subscription formula similar to that offered to companies. Extracurricular assistance for students in difficulty is also privatized and has adopted the same approach. At least, in this case, the company leading the way, named Paper, is at least established in Montreal.
In transportation, if the automotive industry succeeds in realizing its waking dream of a world where cars are electric, autonomous and offered to the public in the form of a fleet of vehicles shared by all of a manufacturer’s customers, we will no longer need public transport networks. We will have essentially privatized it.
It’s the REM, but several times better: made-to-measure public transit, sold by subscription, by builders who will leave the infrastructure maintenance bill to the governments.
Another rarely cited benefit of the subscription economy is that it is more difficult for consumers to keep a tight record of all the services they access. Already, in the television and cinema market alone, North American consumers subscribe on average to three or four different competing services, but do not consult them all at the same frequency.
The cost of Amazon’s RxPass unlimited drug delivery service is in addition to the Prime program. The average customer who wants to cancel his subscription will have to unsubscribe twice rather than once… People whose personal finances are a mess are not at the end of their troubles. Or is there a private, subscription-based course somewhere on the Internet that can help them stick to their budget?
Anyway, if ever all these monthly payments congest your credit cards to such an extent that you can no longer repay, rest assured: there are debt consolidators who will be happy to buy back your unpaid balances to resell them to you at a low price…reimbursable for the rest of your life!