Transcript
A (0:00)
Walmart has introduced a virtual badge to help Medicare Advantage members identify items they can buy with their OTC benefits. According to Retail Dive, people can add their benefit cards to their virtual Walmart wallets to access a digital experience that includes a product badge and search filter to identify items that are eligible for those benefits when shopping in stores. The badge will appear when people scan eligible items barcodes with the Walmart app, the retailer's Quote Benefits Program eligible badge appears on a wide variety of over the counter food and wellness products such as meal replacement shakes, ground coffee, vitamins and cold and flu medication. Customers can also access a tracker that lets them monitor their unused benefits. Walmart said the Everyday Health Signals platform can enhance the well being of Medicare Advantage customers by providing information that can help them make healthier choices. By analyzing their Walmart purchases. The AI powered tool can provide the customer with the nutrition analysis and shopping list. Chris, this is also the A and M put you on the spot right away here. Bright and early in Barcelona. A and M wants to know three.
B (1:09)
Hours of sleep in Barcelona. Yes, let's start off hot.
A (1:12)
Yes, A and M says we recognize and applaud Walmart's efforts to help Medicare members reduce the billions of dollars of their annually forfeited over the counter benefits. And given this is a digital only virtual wallet and barcode scanning discovery process, is the overlap big enough yet between Medicare members and digital savviness to meaningfully succeed in this effort? What a beautifully worded question and now I'll let you take the stage and provide an answer.
B (1:44)
Yeah, thank you Ann. Thank you. That's so kind of you. So, yeah, I mean my answer to that question is, is yes. Yes it does. I think it, I think it will be meaningful. And the reason I say that from Walmart's perspective, because the bar is incredibly low. All you're talking about here is software. You're deploying software. So any usage you get on this is gravy. And the cost of trying to do this, I imagine is not prohibitively expensive. And the upside if you get people to use it is incredibly credibly high. And digital wallets, while while still new for some, are, you know, gaining more and more traction each and every day. So that's why I laud this move because it's a trend we talked about. You know, I said at the outset food is medicine that we're only going to hear more about because the number one answer to everything and everything in the world is money. And there's a lot of money to be claimed for programs like these that is just going unused quite frankly. So, and I've been talking to a lot of companies recently. I've been talking to, I spending, I've actually been, it's funny this headline came up because I've been spending a lot of time with a company called Sifter and probably spent four hours with them in the last month just talking about this topic. And they're a company that helps retailers identify items based on their nutritional ingredients and everything. And so we were talking about like this similar use case for GLP1. Like how do you help customers identify GLP1 friendly items very quickly? And there's a merchandising use case in that. So the last part I'd say is I, I just love this too because it 100% aligns with Walmart's brand promise of save money, live better and that's what the world needs is right now. And so I, I, I just can't do anything but applaud this. I think, I think it's a great move and they're just going to learn from doing it too. That's the other thing. So like there's, there's no risk here.