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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 30 2018, @06:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-stop-shop dept.

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Disrupt Health Care

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase announced on Tuesday that they would form an independent health care company to serve their employees in the United States. The three companies provided few details about the new entity, other than saying it would initially focus on technology to provide simplified, high-quality health care for their employees and their families, and at a reasonable cost. They said the initiative, which is in the early planning stages, would be a long-term effort "free from profit-making incentives and constraints."

The partnership brings together three of the country's most influential companies to try to improve a system that other companies have tried and failed to change: Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world; Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett; and JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States by assets.

Various health insurance and pharmacy companies were hit by the news:

The move sent shares of health-care stocks falling in early trading. Express Scripts Holding Co. and CVS Health Corp., which manage pharmacy benefits, slumped 6.7 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively. Health insurers Cigna Corp. and Anthem Inc. also dropped. The health-care industry has been nervously eyeing the prospect of competition from Amazon for months. While the new company created by Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan would be for their U.S. staff only, this is the first big move by Amazon into the industry. The new collaboration could pressure profits for middlemen in the U.S. health-care supply chain.

Related: $54 Billion Anthem-Cigna Health Insurer Merger Rejected by U.S. Judge
CVS Attempting $66 Billion Acquistion of Health Insurer Aetna


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @07:30PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @07:30PM (#630546)

    Where are my Bread and Circuses?????

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by fyngyrz on Wednesday January 31 2018, @12:52PM

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Wednesday January 31 2018, @12:52PM (#630927) Journal

    Says right here you didn't sign up for circus insurance. So, no bread for you. Starve. It's the American Republican Way.

  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday January 31 2018, @01:59PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday January 31 2018, @01:59PM (#630938) Journal

    Well, you can until the age of 18 or graduation from 12th grade attend school, learning everything from 2+2=4 through Calculus AP, for the cost of supplies and food, and if you can't get those they'll be gotten to you somehow. (Despite our establishment doing its damndest to not make the system universal but subsidize the children of the elite's education at different institutions).

    If you are sick to a degree that you could be dying, you can walk into any Emergency Room in the country and know that you will get assessment and immediate care treatment for emergency conditions, regardless of your ability to pay. (Despite our establishment doing its damndest to sink that with for-profit urgent care centers and the like to classify emergent and urgent care conditions).

    If you are hungry, there are very few semi-urban areas that do not have a place where you can have 3 subsistence meals a day at zero cost. You can also probably obtain free groceries at a food bank to cook them yourself. (Despite our establishment doing its damndest to sink that by cutting all possible forms of public aid, upping the number of people who need such services, then saying "those lazy bums need to work more!")

    If you can follow a modicum of appropriate public behavior, almost every community has a building that you can enter where both entertainment and facts are available for the reading (or browsing). You can spend entire days there feeding your mind with entertainment or knowledge (or both). (I don't know how the establishment is gunning for this one, thank God!)

    If someone punches you in the nose, you may call an agency in which an ambulance will come and pick you up and take you to the emergency room, regardless of your ability to pay (even if the ambulance crew feels you don't need it they must take you if you ask, and you might not get the treatment you think you want, dependent on the injury..... but if you've been stabbed or shot you'll be glad of the service if you survive). A whole bunch of other people will show up who can attempt to take the person who punched you away and lock them up so you're safe. (Despite our establishment doing its damndest to make people foot the bill for it who don't have the resources to, and take the people who have the resources and give them tax breaks. And yeah, lots of injustice happens too, but this is the ideal.)

    I think those are enough for the moment. But I'm sure I can come up with more if you want.

    --
    This sig for rent.