Amazon, Berkshire, JP Morgan join forces to tackle health care

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WASHINGTON: Three titans of American business announced Tuesday they are joining forces to tackle one of the most enduring problems in the country: quality affordable health care.

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and Jeff Bezos’ retail behemoth Amazon will link with financial giant JP Morgan to create a nonprofit health care plan to “provide US employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent health care at a reasonable cost,” the companies said.

“The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” Buffett said in a statement. “But we also do not accept it as inevitable.”

He acknowledged that while the group “does not come to this problem with answers… 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 companies did not specify how many people would benefit under the new program, but together they employ at least a million workers nationwide, and it could impact far more if Berkshire Hathaway’s subsidiaries are included.

– Goal to “create solutions” –

Rising health care costs in the United States, the only major world economy that does not provide universal medical coverage to its citizens, have been a perennial political issue.

President Donald Trump failed to convince Congress to abolish Obamacare, the system put in place by his predecessor that allowed individuals to access private medical insurance and provided other protections while trying to limit the growth of costs.

Studies show US health care costs as a share of the economy have doubled since the 1980s to 18 percent of GDP, and are far higher and growing faster than other major economies.

About half of Americans get their insurance through their employers, while the rest depend on government assistance or are uninsured, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“Hard as it might be, reducing health care’s burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort,” Bezos said.

But he cautioned that success will require “a long-term orientation.”

The companies acknowledged that the effort is in the early planning stages, and other details about the plan and its management will be announced later.

The initiative will be spearheaded by Todd Combs, an investment officer of Berkshire Hathaway; Marvelle Sullivan Berchtold, a managing director of JPMorgan Chase; and Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, highlighted the advantage of joining forces to address the issues

“The three of our companies have extraordinary resources, and our goal is to create solutions that benefit our US employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans,” he said.

And health care share prices sank on news of the new health care effort. Insurers such Cigna and Dow member UnitedHealth Group lost more than four percent, pharmacy chain CVS Health tumbled nearly five percent and pharmaceutical giants Merck and Pfizer both lost about one percent. -AFP