In a move that could disrupt the health care market, Amazon is teaming up with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the New York bank JPMorgan Chase, to create an independent health care company that will help their U.S. employees find quality care “at a reasonable cost.”
The leaders of each company, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Buffett, and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, offered few details on the new company today, saying that the project is in the early planning stage.
“The ballooning costs of (health care) act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” Buffett says in a prepared statement. “Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable.”
The new company will be independent and “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.” The new venture’s initial focus would be on technology that provides “simplified, high-quality and transparent” care, the businesses say.
It was not clear if the ultimate goal involves expanding the ambitious project beyond Amazon, Berkshire or JPMorgan. However, JPMorgan’s Dimon says the ultimate goal is to create solutions that benefit U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans.
