Why Amazon Ditching Telehealth Has Me Worried About Teladoc
One of the biggest risks to Teladoc Health (NYSE: TDOC) was the ability of a big tech giant like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) to steal market share away from the telehealth company. Amazon, after all, has made multiple acquisitions into the healthcare industry and also has a telehealth business, Amazon Care. But in August, Amazon announced it was shutting Amazon Care down.
The news seems like it should be positive for a stock like Teladoc. However, as an investor in the company, there are a couple of scenarios that I still worry about today. Here's why.
Amazon's decision to halt its telehealth services suggests that maybe it wasn't as easy getting into telehealth as the tech giant may have assumed. While it undoubtedly has the technical resources to get it done, it's quite another issue to get subscribers to sign up for its service and trust the tech company. As perhaps a sign that things may not have been going all that well, Amazon highlighted in February that Whole Foods (its own subsidiary) was a new customer for its service.
Source Fool.com
