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Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven

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Re: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven

#31

Post by imtringued »

theptip wrote: post #24
r00fus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you know if your doctor wasn’t a fraud?

Milton Friedman covers this in detail in “Capitalism and Freedom” if you want the full Libertarin justification, but the short answer is 1) voluntary certification, or 2) market reputation, or 3) threat of enforcement of anti-fraud laws that are less specific than licensure requirements. The general idea being that it is seldom a good thing to remove cheap options (eg forcing poor people to go bankrupt instead of let…

I wouldn't trust Milton Friedman's opinion when it comes to life and death. He loves busting supporting pillars without first considering how to migrate off of them. His economic "misadventures" in China resulted in protests at the Tiananmen Square and everyone knows how that ended.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven

#32

Post by mola »

mchusma wrote: post #20

I keep hoping that someone makes a run at the most obvious health care need: a consumer centric medical record that you control with automated diagnosis engine. Diagnosis is fundamentally an information problem, so should be zero marginal cost. Generic drugs have near zero marginal costs, so the idea that most healthcare needs to be expensive is incorrect from first principles. I think if this is impossible in the US…

A lot of places in the world get healthcare right. The us is failing miserably to provide its citizens with affordable healthcare. And they are actively trying to export their failed system. Too bad they're also top rate marketers.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven

#33

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Reminds me of when 3 big players decided to produce a unified Unix. Day came for announcements - each advertised their own proprietary extensions, making them just '3 new versions of Unix'. Of course they did - that's how business works. For-profit entities are not going to function as standards bodies. They cannot. Anyway, probably unrelated but another anecdote about 'big companies can't get along'

Re: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven

#34

Post by superfrank »

foobarbazetc wrote: post #27
superfrank wrote: post #13

For anyone wanting a short summary, these two excerpts pretty much summarize the entire situation: > One key issue facing Haven was that each of the three founding companies executed their own projects separately with their own employees, obviating the need for the joint venture to begin with > Many of the Boston-based firm’s 57 workers are expected to be placed at Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase as the…

How is it a non-story? Imagine how much money was spent on this thing, plus the copious write ups in Axios etc. They failed. The rest is noise. What do you think they’re “collaborating” on now that this JV is wound down? What’s a “health care project” in the context of JPMorgan? Employees still have normal group health insurance with normal healthcare delivery.

It's a non-story for three reasons, IMO.

1) All three companies are still working on health care projects on their own and it sounds like most of the Haven employees are being offered positions on one of those continuing teams.

2) While it's could just be press release talk, but they claim they will still collaborate in an informal matter.

3) The three companies combined have almost 1.5 million employees. This entire venture consisted of 57 people. Even for the smallest of the three companies (JPM) this Haven was just a drop in the bucket. I've personally worked at much smaller companies that pissed away far more resources and no one gave a shit.

The idea is still valid, each company is still sees value in the space, there was no major falling out between the companies, and the number of employees affected in a negative way is negligible. This is basically an organizational restructuring. Total non-story, IMO.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven

#35

Post by kmerroll »

Being pretty deep in the US industrial healthcare complex it's not surprising to see the Haven partners break off on their own after three years. I would suggest this reflects the complexity of our current healthcare delivery system and also the misalignment between the shorter technology cycles and the far longer cycles of foundational changes in healthcare. Would Haven have succeed with more time? I would say the actual question was what could Haven achieved in only three years?

Have to admit this is sad news as the promise of Haven was a possibly significant challenge to the current, awful, state of healthcare in the US and offer a commercial single-payer solution that would avoid the entrenched political agendas driving the public option discussion.

Lastly, I feel Amazon missed a huge opportunity here with their massive technical capability combined with the insurance and financial capabilities of their partners. Creating a vertical integrated health system isn't new, but the capabilities of Haven were significant. Sadly, seems like the Amazon Health strategy was limited.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven

#36

Post by foxtr0t »

kmerroll wrote: post #35

Being pretty deep in the US industrial healthcare complex it's not surprising to see the Haven partners break off on their own after three years. I would suggest this reflects the complexity of our current healthcare delivery system and also the misalignment between the shorter technology cycles and the far longer cycles of foundational changes in healthcare. Would Haven have succeed with more time? I would say the a…

I have a similar but slightly different take. Though it was announced with tons of media hype and attention, this project seemed doomed to fail from the outset. Amazon, JP Morgan, BH may be giants in their own industries, but they're relative outsiders to the healthcare industry. We aren't used to seeing Amazon flop like this, so when it was announced, I think people expected that it would succeed. I think they're finding the limits of their long term strategy. Ultimately, Amazon is a supply chain, logistics, and tech company. JP Morgan Chase is an investment bank and services co, and BH is a holding company. IMO if they're really keen on upending the healthcare industry, they'd need to involve an industry player like Kaiser, who have existing infrastructure stood up and tons of relevant expertise.

Re: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven

#37

Post by theptip »

imtringued wrote: post #31
theptip wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Milton Friedman covers this in detail in “Capitalism and Freedom” if you want the full Libertarin justification, but the short answer is 1) voluntary certification, or 2) market reputation, or 3) threat of enforcement of anti-fraud laws that are less specific than licensure requirements. The general idea being that it is seldom a good thing to remove cheap options (eg forcing poor people to go bankrupt instead of let…

I wouldn't trust Milton Friedman's opinion when it comes to life and death. He loves busting supporting pillars without first considering how to migrate off of them. His economic "misadventures" in China resulted in protests at the Tiananmen Square and everyone knows how that ended.

I think trying to blame Friedman for the Tiananmen Square massacre is a bit of a stretch.
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