: NPR's Nathan Rott explains how it works.
NATHAN ROTT: It's called the prevention plan.
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U: What if there was a way to get on a path to better health?
ROTT: And it's being called big business's newest way to crack into the health- care field. It's not health insurance or a replacement for the doctor, just a personalized prevention plan or health screening - at least for people that can get it online. Here's how it works: You buy a kit through the Internet from Sam's Club for $99. You then start by filling out an extensive health questionnaire, like you would at a doctor. Next, you mail a small blood sample, which you collect at home using the finger-stick that comes with your kit. And then you send that information to U.S. Preventive Medicine, a company headed by Christopher Fey.
M: Our technology actually digests all that information, analyzes it, and then turns it into a plan for you based on your current conditions, based on your family history, based on the facts you have given us.
ROTT: But now, the idea is being packaged, marketed and sold by a major retailer.
: Health care consumes a huge fraction of our U.S. GDP and so obviously, there's a lot of money there.
ROTT: That's Ateev Mehrotra. He's an analyst at the RAND Corporation, and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine. He says retailers have long looked at cracking into the multibillion-dollar health- care industry. Minute clinics, eye clinics, pharmacies - all are different attempts to do just that. The Prevention Plan, Mehrotra says, seems like just the latest stab at it.
M: The idea of retailers entering the prevention area, I think, is really interesting and innovative. If we can provide those prevention services closer to where they work, live or shop, I think that's a really exciting trend.
ROTT: Barbara Johnson's cart is loaded with groceries and paper towels. She'd rather the stores focus on items like that; let doctors deal with the health care.
M: I mean, it's just like if you needed a car. Would you come here to buy a car, or would you go to a dealership?
ROTT: Jerri Ward disagrees. There's a health care gap, she says. And if nobody else is going to fill it, why not retailers?
M: It makes sense. I mean, capitalism - everybody wants what? To make the money. And if you can make the money and serve the people, that's a good thing.
ROTT: Nathan Rott, NPR News, Washington.