It is a welcoming move. I hope they make it available for public sector as well. I would be more than happy to have my prescriptions delivered using Amazon Prime same day/2nd day service.
Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
101–110 of 540 posts
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#102It's not just the cost. It's the incredible inefficiency of the operations, and, the gerrymandering of coverage. Under the ACA, I had to choose between allowing my family to continue to see their lifetime care givers, or, paying in network rates, for the full year, because the insurance company I chose gave me incorrect information when they were trying to get my business (my wife is less kind in evaluating their mot…
Hearing the report on Bloomberg news earlier today. Isn't this just for the 900k employees and isn't it just focusing on wearable tech? It sounded more like fitbit with cloud services than insurance.
Kaiser Permanente was originally just for employees, so, you know, it could go somewhere.
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#103It's not just the cost. It's the incredible inefficiency of the operations, and, the gerrymandering of coverage. Under the ACA, I had to choose between allowing my family to continue to see their lifetime care givers, or, paying in network rates, for the full year, because the insurance company I chose gave me incorrect information when they were trying to get my business (my wife is less kind in evaluating their mot…
"I paid $30,000 in health care expenses out of pocket that year for what was essentially a healthy family."
Outragous, I paid $10,000 in fire insurance for a house THAT WAS NOT BURNING!
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm genuinely fascinated by this comment. You're saying that mutuals offer lower prices (not typically true), but they were out-competed by private companies? I'm not sure that makes sense. In my sector (life insurance), there's no real pattern to mutual vs public company pricing, but maybe it's different in auto insurance, for instance.
It goes beyond pricing. Mutual insurance policy owners were paid dividends based on principle investment. Berkshire pays dividends to shareholders, i.e. Warren Buffet, while policy holders get nothing but insurance coverage.
> Berkshire pays dividends to shareholders
Berkshire has never paid a dime of dividends to anybody.
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#105What about a series of free top notch clinics? Or do these three combined not have enough global revenue yet?
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#106Here's what this is about. Large successful companies contract out their health insurance and care to external companies. Most of those companies are profit centers- they provide a service, but they take a very large profit on it. Much of that profit is just waste- it's money that goes to people who aren't innovating, or providing value, just acting as gatekeepers (note: this is just my opinion, not provable fact). C…
I'd call this liberal-communism. We just have to put our trust in benevolent billionaires to solve our problems for us with no oversight or democratic controls whatsoever. The idea that this is anything but an attempt to squeeze even more money out of the system for quite literally the richest people on Earth is naive. In Ohio, 10% of Amazon employees are on food stamps[1] while Bezos is worth over 100 billion dollars.
[1] https://www.policymattersohio.org/press-room/2018/01/05/more...
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel Buffet and Bezos have the technical capacity and certainly the capital to tackle this issue. They can't fix the entire HC market, but they can have a great start.
All involved players are mainly interested in lining their own pockets. The question if this will come at the expense of patients or other players in health care.
There is nothing wrong with “lining your own pockets” as a motivation. It is the fundamental driver of capitalism and the motivation for most entrepreneurs.
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel Buffet and Bezos have the technical capacity and certainly the capital to tackle this issue. They can't fix the entire HC market, but they can have a great start.
All involved players are mainly interested in lining their own pockets. The question if this will come at the expense of patients or other players in health care.
Given that Buffett pledged to donate 90% of his wealth to charities, I'm not sure you can characterize him as "mainly interested in lining his own pocket."
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
All involved players are mainly interested in lining their own pockets. The question if this will come at the expense of patients or other players in health care.
There is nothing wrong with “lining your own pockets” as a motivation. It is the fundamental driver of capitalism and the motivation for most entrepreneurs.
Just because it is a fundamental whatever of capitalism, doesn't make it 'not wrong'.
Re: Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on whether or not you view healthcare as a basic right for citizens (in the same sense as education and law enforcement etc.) The free market coming up with a co-op approach that may only benefit the handful of companies involved only benefits me if I’m in one of those companies.
Any one who is arguing that this is the free market at work doesn't believe that healthcare is a right. You can have access to healthcare, but that doesn't guarantee that you will.
>Any one who is arguing that this is the free market at work doesn't believe that healthcare is a right. You can have access to healthcare, but that doesn't guarantee that you will.
This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor. - MLK