Bergen to Fill Online Drug Prescriptions
More.com, the largest Internet provider of health and beauty products, will offer prescriptions online by linking with Orange-based Bergen Brunswig Corp., the third-largest U.S. drug wholesaler.
San Francisco-based more.com said it will open the pharmacy later this year, allowing customers to pick up orders at the 2,000 pharmacies in Bergen Brunswig’s Good Neighbor Pharmacy program or receive them through the U.S. Postal Service’s express mail.
More.com and other Internet start-ups are trying to establish themselves as alternatives to the corner pharmacy as more Americans seek drugs to combat diseases and aging-related illnesses.
More.com will accept prescriptions through Bergen Brunswig’s managed-care network, which covers more than 83 million people. Bergen Brunswig will fill the orders though its site in Louisville, Ky.
Closely held more.com launched its Internet drugstore site last week and already is plugging it in advertisements.
Since early last year, the company has operated a site for dietary supplements but recently folded it into more.com. The site now offers 20,000 nonprescription drugstore items and eventually plans to offer far more, said Don Kendall, more.com’s chief executive.
More.com, however, joins an increasingly crowded field of Internet drugstores, run by both purely Web companies and traditional concerns.
All face a big obstacle: signing up customers who are covered by health insurance. Drug reimbursements for the bulk of those customers are controlled by pharmacy-benefit managers, which want the Internet business themselves. Indeed, benefit managers are launching their own Internet drugstore sites, such as Express Scripts Inc.’s yourPharmacy.com.
Kendall said more.com will utilize Bergen’s and Good Neighbor Pharmacy’s relations with managed-care providers to attract insured customers. But he conceded that the company doesn’t yet have any agreements with large benefit managers.
“Without a big [benefit manager] behind you, you are really lost in this game,” said David Restripo, an analyst at Jupiter Communications in New York.
Bergen isn’t solely betting its Internet strategy on more.com, either. The wholesaler, which already supplies nonprescription merchandise for yourPharmacy.com, is hoping to supply products and other services to other Internet sites.
The company’s stock rose 31 cents a share Tuesday to close at $16.
