Should Big Tech companies be able to buy their competitors?
Economic concentration has been the rule for the American economy for decades.
In the past few weeks we’ve seen some pretty big developments in the tech market. Amazon bought One Medical and then immediately after the acquisition killed off their own offering that was called Amazon Care. It hard to build a business and compete in the market; it’s much easier to buy a company that’s done the hard work of hiring people and acquiring and retaining customers. As Christina Farr, health-tech investor at Omers Ventures said:
Physician recruitment is really hard, building insurance contracts is really hard, building employer relationships is really hard. All of those things take a long time and One Medical was available to purchase.
One Medical has contracts with other big tech firms like Google, offering them healthcare and telemedicine for employees. Amazon was able to acquire the One Medical network instead of building their own through Amazon Care. If Amazon Care and One Medical existed as separate companies they would have to compete with each other to hire doctors, to hire employees and to acquire and retain customers. Competition between firms is…
