Business: Amazon Becomes Neighbourhood Online Drugstore

Amazon's new line: The retail giant is paying a mere $1 billion in cash to buy online pharmacy PillPack, The Journal reports. The online retailer outbid Walmart for the five-year-old startup, which presorts medications and ships them to customers’ homes in 49 U.S. states, excluding Hawaii. The deal for PillPack fires a warning shot to drug chains and retailers including CVS Health and Walmart, which have big pieces of the prescription market.

From Stefanie Ilgenfritz Journal Bureau Chief, Health and Science: As Amazon makes its widely anticipated move into the pharmacy space, there are big questions about whether it can mete out the kind of impact in health care—a highly regulated sector where third parties, not the consumer, pay most of the bill—as it has in retail.