Walmart
quietly launched a new health insurance business. The company, called Walmart
Insurance, was filed with the Arkansas Secretary of State last month.
By ELISE REUTER
Post a comment / Jul 7, 2020 at
7:16 PM
Walmart
is making clear what an executive declared in a virtual conference: that it
is firmly in the healthcare business,
not just in retail healthcare.
News
emerged today that the company is planning to throw its weight around in
another healthcare segment in need of an overhaul: insurance. A spokeswoman
from the Bentonville, Arkansas retail behemoth confirmed that the company has
created “Walmart Insurance Services LLC” to sell insurance policies. The
business entity’s name was first filed with the Arkansas Secretary of State in
late June.
“We
currently offer access to insurance information in our Walmart Health
locations, and we have a long-standing education program called Healthcare
Begins Here to help people find the right insurance plan for them,” spokeswoman
Marilee McInnis wrote in an email. “We’re expanding our current insurance
services to now include the sale of insurance policies to our customers.”
A handful of job postings at a call
center in the Dallas metro also match up with Walmart Insurance Services, as
first pointed out by Talk Business & Politics. Walmart has
listings for licensed insurance agents and Medicare sales supervisors.
“Yes,
you read that right, Walmart now has an insurance agency,” the listings read.
It
looks like the new subsidiary will be focused on selling Medicare Advantage plans,
though the company was mum when asked for additional details. The spokeswoman’s
statement about the “sale of insurance policies to our customers” also leaves
open the possibility of Walmart expanding its services beyond senior shoppers
in the future.
Medicare
Advantage plans have been experiencing rapid growth in the past decade,
with more than a third of all
beneficiaries enrolled in a plan managed by a private insurer.
That figure is expected to increase in the future.
Deeper
into the pharmacy space
Separately,
on Tuesday, Walmart announced that it had struck a partnership with PBM
startup Capital Rx, which provides health plans real-time information on
prescription drug prices.
Walmart
has been a big player in the pharmacy space for several years, and the company
appears to be deepening that through this partnership.
“‘Everyday
low price’ has been a guiding principle at Walmart. We take pride in providing
affordable prices to more than 160 million customers who shop Walmart each
week,” Walmart Health and Wellness Vice President Luke Kleyn said in a news
release. “Working with Capital Rx will allow us to do the same for prescription
drugs,”
Capital
Rx was founded just over two years ago by AJ Loiacono, a former insurance
auditor, with the idea of providing drug prices as part of pharmacy benefit
plans.
Loiacono
started his career in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, where
“everything that comes out of that plant has a price.”
When he
moved over to the auditing and procurement side, working with payers and
self-insured companies, he was shocked to find out that none of their contracts
included drug prices. To solve this, the company uses Medicaid’s National
Average Drug Acquisition Cost, rather than the average wholesale price, to
calculate costs.
As a
standalone company, Capital Rx was able to provide price information for retail
drugs, but they weren’t able to do the same for mail and specialty drugs. The
partnership with Walmart will “complete the model,” with Walmart providing mail
and specialty drug fulfillment.
With
the partnership, Capital Rx was able to quickly sign on some payers, though it
hasn’t yet disclosed which ones.
“Walmart
is a diversified company. We liked the fact that they were independent. They’re
not part of a PBM or a health system today,” Loiacono said. “The other part of
it is, they have scale.”
Loiacono
also pointed to similar goals in price transparency — something Walmart
emphasized when it shared the cash pay prices for its new health clinics.
“This
is what we’re seeing a little bit more of as the future in the roadmap,”
Loiacono said. “They’re making a serious investment in healthcare.”
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