Amazon, big finance spearhead healthcare effort without 'profit-making incentives'
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase have announced plans to develop a program to pare down health care costs initially for their own employees, but with a suggestion that it could expand the effort to the rest of Americans in the future.
Few details of the program are publicly known at the moment. All three firms note that they have done little prior to the announcement beyond assigning an executive in charge at each company, but the releases accompanying the news say that "technology solutions" developed by a stand-alone company will be applied first to simplify health care.
"The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers," Berkshire Hathaway Chief Executive Warren Buffet saidt. "But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we share the belief that putting our collective resources behind the country's best talent can, in time, check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes."
While limited at first to the 1.1 million employees spanning the three companies, there are suggestions that the effort will expand to the rest of the country, should it prove successful.
"Our people want transparency, knowledge and control when it comes to managing their healthcare," JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said. "The three of our companies have extraordinary resources, and our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans."
Rumors have swirled for years regarding Amazon's entry into the market, either as a vendor for inexpensive prescription drugs, or as part of a larger role.
"The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said. "Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare's burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort."
The spin-off company responsible for deploying the technical solutions at first will be run by Amazon Senior Vice President Beth Galetti, Todd Combs from Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Managing Director Marvelle Sullivan Berchtold.
At present, it isn't clear if external solutions like Apple's health record initiative, or Apple Watch data, will be integrated into any solution accepted by the company. Regardless, the move by Amazon and the finance companies may open acceptance to disruption of existing healthcare solutions to more people and organizations, instead of Apple having to try to pry open doors itself.
Few details of the program are publicly known at the moment. All three firms note that they have done little prior to the announcement beyond assigning an executive in charge at each company, but the releases accompanying the news say that "technology solutions" developed by a stand-alone company will be applied first to simplify health care.
"The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers," Berkshire Hathaway Chief Executive Warren Buffet saidt. "But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we share the belief that putting our collective resources behind the country's best talent can, in time, check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes."
While limited at first to the 1.1 million employees spanning the three companies, there are suggestions that the effort will expand to the rest of the country, should it prove successful.
"Our people want transparency, knowledge and control when it comes to managing their healthcare," JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said. "The three of our companies have extraordinary resources, and our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans."
Rumors have swirled for years regarding Amazon's entry into the market, either as a vendor for inexpensive prescription drugs, or as part of a larger role.
"The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said. "Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare's burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort."
The spin-off company responsible for deploying the technical solutions at first will be run by Amazon Senior Vice President Beth Galetti, Todd Combs from Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Managing Director Marvelle Sullivan Berchtold.
At present, it isn't clear if external solutions like Apple's health record initiative, or Apple Watch data, will be integrated into any solution accepted by the company. Regardless, the move by Amazon and the finance companies may open acceptance to disruption of existing healthcare solutions to more people and organizations, instead of Apple having to try to pry open doors itself.
Comments
Personally, I’d be more comfortable trusting Apple with my healthcare, but Amazon gets the first mover advantage... again.
On the other hand, your employer knowing everything about your health might not be a good thing. You can see a future where compensation, promotion and other decisions could be made with health considerations in mind, or even decisions about lay-offs. Employees could be more dependent than ever on their employers (COBRA isn't great but it can give you a cushion) so losing your job or quitting because of some unacceptable factor at work, would cost you more than ever.
Of course, the fact that this is even something they need to consider doing, because healthcare in this county is such a freaking mess, is the real tragedy.
https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2018/01/30/the-amazon-effect-rattles-health-care-stocks/
I see less reason to trust my employer with making the best decisions for my health when it can be against their interests to do so.
Enron. We can come up with plenty of examples where the private sector screwed up when it’s in their interest to do so. Federal government, oversight, and regulation fulfill valid job-to-be-done use cases.
The larger problem is insurance companies are treated like banks, too big to fail. More and more companies are being added to that list making it very difficult to streamline any business to save consumers money. (Take consumers either way you want, plural or possessive.) I hope these companies can actually find a way to reduce medical costs but is they simply take a short cut and continue to outsource their medical accounts handling to an insurance company they haven't improved anything.
When COMPETITION instead of top-down control is involved, it is competition that squeezes out that self-interest which serves immediate needs in favor of long-term mutual self-benefit.
If there was no competition and unlimited demand for cell phones, a single cell phone company could charge anything it wanted for a phone and there would be nothing anyone could do about it.
It's an example of a private company in what is often a heavily government regulated business, running their business according to their own interests only. The point being that the interests of pure-private aren't always best for consumers, employees, or citizens either. Regulation by nature isn't bad. Like most things there is an appropriate amount.
I don’t care care as much who provides some form of not-for- profit single payer plan, the government or private industry, as long as we all get a shot at it. What a concept: competition for the best single payer plan! All about outcomes, not shareholder profit.
Agreed, there is lots of greed to go around, the costs don't seem realistic in a normal market but are allowed to exist in the insurance/medical world. Example: an hour of PT has a sticker price of $1100, which the insurance company negotiates a "contract rate" down to hundreds, and then I pay part of it. But if I hire a strength coach for an hour of 1-on-1 I get more attention and a much cheaper market price of maybe $100.
Another example: I went to the ENT to check my sinuses. The office visit was $250, but when he used an optical instrument to stick down my nose and look around for 5 minutes? $900! This is insane. A plumber does something similar but doesn't charge an extra $900 to use his pipe camera. Now those are the sticker prices, and the insurance company then makes a deal for less, and then charges me some of that, citing the savings they brokered. But the sticker prices are the problem -- they are unrealistically high. Maybe this is an area where some competition would be nice, but if all the hospitals do it how do we get there...