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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
(Score: 5, Insightful) by rondon on Tuesday January 30 2018, @09:20PM (6 children)
So does anyone else see the parallels between our current society and the dystopia laid out by Shadowrun.
1. Corps being more influential/powerful than government.
2. Corps becoming the ultimate provider for their employees.
3. Corps as global powers that aren't beholden to one country or people.
I'm mystified as to why people think that this progression is a good thing for anyone other than the ultra-wealthy, but I guess I'm going to stay that way because very few want to evaluate the facts and change their mind about a damn thing.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 30 2018, @09:46PM
I don't know Shadowrun, but it seems to be headed towards something strikingly similar to Mack Reynolds "Joe Mauser" stories. The major difference, to be true, is that Mack Reynolds didn't have Communism fall apart so dramatically.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 30 2018, @09:58PM (1 child)
It's not really a "progression" if you look at things longer-term. For #1 and #3, we had that back in the 1700s with the British East India Company and Dutch East India Company. With #2, we had that a century or so ago in the US with "company towns" where the company owned the town, rented apartments to the employees, controlled all the businesses there, and only paid workers in "scrip", which of course could only be used at the company store.
This new healthcare company is probably a good thing for the employees of these companies, compared to the crap that's available on the market for them right now. But it isn't the first time companies provided healthcare as a benefit; they did that back around WWII as well, because of wage controls, and it's continued since then. And it's not even the first time they've made a new company for this purpose instead of just buying coverage from existing insurance companies; Kaiser Permanente was started the same way.
The fundamental problem here isn't stuff from Shadowrun (whatever that is), it's the fact that the US won't just adopt single-payer healthcare like most other wealthy industrialized nations, and insists on having an utterly broken system. But it isn't going to change any time soon, because half of Americans are paranoid about "socialism!!!", as we see even in posts right here on SN attached to this article. So we're going to continue having a totally broken system that costs far more per capita than any other country in the world while delivering sub-par care. Maybe if American voters were smart enough to not vote for 1) a party that wants to eliminate government regulation in healthcare or health insurance, and 2) candidates who tell us "it's not time for single-payer healthcare, so I'm not going to bother pursuing that policy if you vote for me", then we'd be able to join the ranks of Canada, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Sweden, France, and UK.
Here's a great chart and graph showing just how the US compares to other developed nations. [wikipedia.org] Check out Japan for instance: their infant mortality is a little over 1/3 of ours, their life expectancy is probably highest in the world (ours is lowest in that group of nations), and they have less than 2/3 the preventable deaths (per capita); but their government pays 80% of costs (ours pays 45%), yet their per-capita expenditure is a little over 1/3, their cost as percentage of GDP is about 1/2, and they spend less of government revenue (16.8% vs. 18.5%). Basically, they're getting much cheaper and more effective healthcare. We spend even more of our government revenues on it, and then we require citizens to pay far more in addition, for crappier healthcare. Part of this is because we're paying armies of people in the healthcare insurance industry to be middle-men and try to prevent us from getting care, and part is because our government refuses to strictly regulate pricing the way the Japanese government does.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @05:13AM
Yes. You earned that Insightful mod.
WWII [...] wage controls
I'm shocked that I had to get this far down in the (meta)thread to see this.
Yes, that was the start of company benefits to employees.
Note also that prices were frozen in that period.
US won't just adopt single-payer healthcare like most other wealthy industrialized nations
That's been mentioned previously in the (meta)thread, but it bears repeating.
...and it isn't -most- other; it's ALL other.
USA stands alone among industrialized nations in not providing universal healthcare for every one of its residents.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday January 30 2018, @10:04PM (1 child)
I've never read Shadowrun, but the theme is a common one throughout science fiction and I think a lot of us see it and are concerned about it.
(Score: 2) by Post-Nihilist on Tuesday January 30 2018, @11:18PM
that is a board game, I guess you can read it the manuals and extension and premade quest for lazy GM, but the shawdorun universe is best understood by playing with a good GM
Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ilsa on Tuesday January 30 2018, @10:05PM
That's because American culture has brainwashed the masses into thinking that they are not poor.... only temporary non-rich. Ergo, they don't want to take away rich people's benefits because they're convinced that they will soon be able to enjoy those benefits themselves.