Amazon.com plans to build dozens of warehouses to serve rural areas in the U.S. before the end of next year, growing its footprint as the company works to rely less on other carriers.

The firm said it expects to have about 210 delivery stations up and running as part of a broad effort to establish a dedicated rural delivery network that began in 2020. It operated about 70 such facilities at the end of 2023, Amazon spokesperson Alexa Clark said, declining to specify say how many the company operates today. By the end of 2026, Amazon said, it will have invested $4 billion total in the project.

The largest online retailer has spent the past decade building a massive logistics operation that includes hundreds of warehouses in and around major cities and a network of bespoke contractors that hire drivers who pilot blue Amazon-branded vans.

Medicare Advantage insurers sued

The US Department of Justice sued top health insurance companies and brokers alleging they used illegal kickbacks to steer members into certain private Medicare Advantage plans.

The complaint names units of CVS Health Corp., Elevance Health Inc. and Humana Inc., along with broker companies eHealth, Inc., GoHealth, Inc., and SelectQuote Inc.

The government lawsuit, which was initiated by a whistleblower in 2021 and unsealed Thursday, alleges that brokers told their agents to sell Medicare Advantage based on the kickbacks and blocked the sale of insurance plans that didn’t pay. The complaint, which covers behavior from 2016 through 2021, further alleges that Aetna and Humana pressured brokers to enroll fewer disabled people in their plans.

Medicare Advantage is a private version of Medicare, the government health plan mostly for people in the US aged 65 and older. Over half of the Medicare population are enrolled in these private plans. They often enroll in plans with the help of a broker, who may be paid commissions by insurance companies.

20,000 jobs are set to be cut at UPS

UPS is looking to slash about 20,000 jobs and close more than 70 facilities as it drastically reduces the amount of Amazon shipments it handles.

The package delivery company said Tuesday that it anticipates making the job cuts this year. It anticipates closing 73 leased and owned buildings by the end of June.

UPS said that it is still reviewing its network and may identify more buildings to be shuttered.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said that UPS is obligated to create 30,000 Teamsters jobs under a five-year national agreement that expires in 2028. That labor contract, which was ratified in August 2023, included significant wage increases, improved safety measures, and the elimination of a two-tier wage system.

$202M settlement in Gilead scheme

Gilead Sciences reached a $202 settlement with the U.S. to resolve claims that it paid doctors and gave them meals and travel expenses for events to get them to prescribe its drugs. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan alleged that Gilead conducted programs from January 2011 to November 2017 to promote and increase sales of its drugs to treat the AIDS virus. The events were supposed to be purely educational, with modest meals. Instead, the US said, the company held the programs at high-end restaurants, allowed practitioners to repeatedly attend events on the same topic and paid for them to travel to speak at “desirable destinations,” sometimes at their request. Many doctors then prescribed the company’s drugs, prosecutors said, forcing federal health care programs to pay millions of dollars in reimbursements for the prescriptions.

Job openings decline amid trade war

Job openings in the United States fell in March as President Donald Trump’s trade wars clouded the economic outlook.

U.S. employers posted 7.2 million vacancies in March, down from 7.5 million in February and 8.1 million in March 2024, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. It was the fewest number of openings since September and below the 7.5 million that economists had forecast.

But the department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary also showed that the number of Americans quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in the economy — rose modestly. And layoffs fell to the lowest level since June.

Compiled from Bloomberg and Associated Press reports.