Amazon announced plans in late July to acquire One Medical, a concierge-style healthcare service with about 190 medical offices in 25 regional markets. Last week, the e-commerce giant said it would shut down its hybrid virtual home care service, Amazon Care, a rival to One Medical, citing its inability to meet customer demand.
The One Medical deal is the first announced since CEO Andy Jassy took over, and it’s another push by Amazon in healthcare following its $750 million acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack in 2018.
Following news of the merger, groups calling for tougher antitrust regulations quickly urged the Federal Trade Commission to block the merger, arguing that it would further expand the company’s enormous market power in healthcare.
A spokesman for Amazon declined to comment.
The FTC was already investigating some of the wrongdoing in Amazon’s Prime registration and cancellation process and issued a civil subpoena in the case.
Last year, the company unsuccessfully asked FTC Chairman Lina Khan to recuse herself from a separate antitrust investigation of her business, arguing from her words and actions in previous years that she was biased in her job conduct. Khan was a well-known critic of Seattle-based Amazon and other big tech companies before taking on the chairmanship. In 2017, as a law student at Yale University, she wrote an influential research report titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.”