I’M A LONG-TERM $Hims & Hers Health Inc.(HIMS)$ BEAR -- BUT HERE’S HOW I COULD BE DEAD WRONG
Over the last decade, we’ve watched healthcare inch toward consumerization -- apps replacing clinics, subscriptions replacing waiting rooms, and convenience marketed as care. But what once looked like transformation now feels like prelude. Because with $Amazon.com(AMZN)$ full-force push into telehealth, we’re no longer watching disruption at the edges -- we’re witnessing a redrawing of the center.
Amazon’s move isn’t just competitive -- it’s gravitational. This isn’t a retail giant experimenting with healthcare. It’s the most operationally dominant logistics company in the world deciding that medicine is next. And not because it sees healthcare as a high-margin growth category -- but because it doesn’t have to. When healthcare becomes just another layer of Prime, just another moat in a multi-trillion-dollar ecosystem, the game changes. The rules change. And for every company built around healthcare as a standalone business, the clock starts ticking.
That’s the pressure point for Hims & Hers. Their entire model is built on D2C efficiency -- targeted CACs, recurring subscriptions, and enough vertical integration to squeeze margin out of simplicity. It worked. Until now. Because Amazon doesn’t need to win the same way. It doesn’t need margin. It just needs mindshare. And when you’ve trained 200 million Americans to click “Buy Now” without a second thought, embedding healthcare into that loop isn’t a stretch -- it’s inevitability.
We’re already seeing the signs. $9 monthly plans for Prime members that offer nationwide hybrid care. Same-day medication delivery in key metros. Bundled diagnostics. This isn’t about creating a better healthcare app -- it’s about building a new expectation entirely. One where healthcare arrives before you ask for it. One where value is defined not by outcomes, but by frictionless access. And that, more than anything, is the existential threat: Amazon is collapsing the difference between convenience and care.
And yet -- here’s where it gets complicated. Because beneath the pressure and the panic, there’s a version of this future where Hims doesn’t just survive. It evolves. Where instead of getting steamrolled by Amazon’s scale, it counterpunches with specificity, intimacy, and platform depth. Because unlike Amazon, Hims doesn’t need to serve everyone. It just needs to serve someone -- better.
This is where the $Netflix(NFLX)$ comparison comes into focus -- not as a metaphor for content creation, but for aggregation and access. Just like Netflix became the on-demand portal for all premium content before pivoting to originals, Hims is positioning itself as the on-demand platform for prescription healthcare. If they get it right, they don’t need to own every treatment -- they need to own the interface.
Think of Hims not as a clinic, but as the pharmacy aisle of the internet. A front door to the healthcare economy. Weight loss, dermatology, sexual health, mental health -- not siloed categories, but storefronts under a single brand umbrella. And that umbrella gains power with every new branded deal -- $Novo-Nordisk A/S(NVO)$ , $Eli Lilly(LLY)$ , compounding labs -- because Hims becomes the trusted distributor, not just the provider.
That’s the Amazon-proof angle. Because while Amazon may offer convenience, it doesn’t have patient intimacy, it doesn’t have specialty credibility, and it certainly doesn’t have consumer trust in highly sensitive categories like sexual health or mental wellness. Hims does. And if it can scale that trust into a drug-agnostic, outcome-first, vertically optimized marketplace, then it becomes not just a healthcare platform -- but the platform where modern healthcare is consumed.
But that’s still a big if. Because markets don’t just price potential. They price probability. And right now, the probabilities are skewing toward consolidation, not independence. Toward aggregation, not specialization. Amazon doesn’t need you to choose between cheap and fast. It’s giving you both. And if healthcare becomes yet another Prime perk, then even the most elegant, integrated DTC models start to look vulnerable.
Still, if I’m wrong, it’ll be for one reason: Hims figures out how to make intimacy scale. How to make trust compound. How to make outcomes -- not convenience -- the product. Because in that world, you don’t need to out-Amazon Amazon. You just need to be something it can’t replicate. Something it can’t reduce to logistics. Something human.
And if they get that right, then maybe -- just maybe -- this isn’t a death knell. Maybe it’s the inflection point. The moment Hims stops being a telehealth company, and starts becoming a healthcare platform. One that doesn’t just survive the Amazon age -- but defines what comes after it.
Their earnings tomorrow will be one to watch -- I'll be monitoring margins closely, because that's where pricing power either holds or disappears in a space that increasingly risks becoming commoditized.
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