From bookstore → drugstore

Ah, Amazon – the one place you can buy baguette slippers, an inflatable horse, and prescription meds. Yesterday the company announced RxPass, an Amazon Prime add-on that gives patients access to over 50 generic medications, delivered for free, no insurance needed – all for $5/month.

The program offers meds that treat over 80 conditions, including high blood pressure, acid reflux, and anxiety. And if you're one of the estimated ~150 million Americans with a prescription to one of the meds on the list, here's how it works:

1. Your doc sends the prescription to Amazon Pharmacy (or you can transfer an existing Rx via Amazon’s website).
2. Add all eligible, prescribed meds to your Amazon cart like you would anything else (free of charge, besides the $5/month fee).
3. Amazon ships the meds to you, also for free. And refills are handled automatically.

Though there are a few caveats. Customers enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid are not eligible. And RxPass is not yet available in Texas, California, Washington, or five other states in the US.

💊 Driving the move... Analysts say Amazon sees RxPass as a way to boost signups to its Amazon Prime subscription, as well as a way to broaden its healthcare portfolio and attract more users to Amazon Pharmacy – which ranks at the bottom of the list of Prime perks that drew members to the service, per a Morgan Stanley survey conducted last summer.