Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase will form an independent healthcare company for their combined 1.2 million employees in the United States, the Los Angeles Times reports. Experts believe the move could disrupt the traditional healthcare structure and trigger other private companies to enter the sector.
The three companies provided few details about the new entity, other than saying it would initially focus on technology to provide simplified, high-quality healthcare for their employees and their families, and at a reasonable cost.
They said the initiative, which is in the early planning stages, would be “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.” Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement that the effort could eventually be expanded to benefit all Americans.
I want in. I would love to see those great minds transforming healthcare as we know it.
I would suggest that these captains of business remember that without physicians, nurses and other healthcare workers there is no healthcare company.
We would like to transform healthcare ourselves but when I am told how to practice by an accountant or pharmacist which medications I can use for my patient makes me wonder why I spent all those years training.
We are NOT the enemy, treat us with respect, allow us to practice medicine without the unbelievable amount of hoops we must jump through just to get care for the patients, reimburse us appropriately without threatening every year to cut our pay and one will find that we can do a good job.
When Obama phased out the physician owned hospitals which offered the best quality care, were the most efficient and had the best patient experience when compared to the non physician hospitals it was a big loss.
There is a lot that can be done with medical care but the one thing that is rarely addressed is the patient responsibility of caring for themselves. It is not a topic one wants to discuss politically. The amount of self induced disease I see is double what I saw 10 years ago and almost quadruple what I saw 30 years ago. People make choices and others cannot always remedy the effects of some of these choices.
So if any of the brilliant businesspersons want to see what really needs to be done, come walk in the shoes of the physicians, nurses and others who are on the front line of medicine. Do not stand in the background like the Leap Frog Group has done for many years.