Amazon, JP Morgan, and Berkshire Hathaway team up to make health care less of a pain

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February 6, 2018 12:47 PM

It sounds like an American worker’s healthcare dream: Three huge, wealthy U.S. businesses have teamed up to create a new company that will offer affordable, high-quality health care that’s "free from profit-making incentives and constraints.”

What itll mean for the average guy still isnt clear, but one expert says hes hopeful

It’s what Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon are aiming to create for their workers — health care that improves satisfaction and reduces costs, according to a news release out Tuesday.

“The initial focus of the new company will be on technology solutions that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent health care at a reasonable cost,” the announcement says.

Altogether, the three behemoths employ almost a million people in the U.S., according to NPR. JPMorgan Chase is a global financial services firm and one of the largest banking institutions in the United States; Berkshire Hathaway is an American multinational conglomerate that owns businesses that range from insurance and utilities to underwear and ice cream; Amazon specializes in e-commerce and more.

They’re still in the early planning phase, and where the company will be headquartered and its key operational details are yet to come. In the announcement, Bezos nods to the fact that it’s going to be a formidable endeavor.

“The health care system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," he says. “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. Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation.”

What it'll mean for the average guy still isn't clear, but one expert says he’s hopeful.

“The healthcare industry is really ready and ripe for a change,” Sam Hanna, professor and program director of Health Informatics and the Analytic Masters Program at the George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, told Men’s Health. “This will enable the average man to have better access to better services at a much more reasonable price. It could be small things, like better access to preventive healthcare and understanding more about your overall healthcare use through the use of technology."

Hanna predicts that the three powerhouses will be able to merge their strengths in technology, innovation, analytics, underwriting and insurance, and mergers and acquisitions “and build something new."

One other perk stemming from the partnership is that it might act as a shot in the arm of other healthcare companies, encouraging them to start innovating faster, too. Insurance companies have been talking about these things for some time but have been very slow to innovate, Hanna says.

“I think this is a shot across the bow to the healthcare industry that the status quo is no longer sufficient," he says. "Technology and innovation leaders are going to disrupt the system."

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