Campaign Action
The best you could say about this announcement from three ridiculously rich CEOs of three insanely wealthy corporations that they're getting into the health insurance business is "it's the thought that counts." Maybe?
Amazon is diving into health care, teaming up with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the New York bank JPMorgan Chase, to create a company that helps their U.S. employees find quality care “at a reasonable cost.” […]
“The ballooning costs of (health care) act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” Buffett said in a prepared statement. “Our group does not come to this problem with answers. 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.”
The new company will be independent and “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.” The businesses said the new venture’s initial focus would be on technology.
That's all we've got as far as details so far, in addition to JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon saying, "our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans." That and that it will focus on "technology solutions that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost."
Technology in the health insurance world is not going to save us from the rising cost of healthcare, from the profit motive of every actor in the sector down the line from the pharmaceutical companies to device makers to hospitals and individual providers. It's a corporatist response—however well-meaning (though anything Dimon is involved in can't be entirely altruistic)—to a problem that the rest of the developed world has answered with public solutions. "There's an app for that" just isn't going to cut it.