Re:Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
by adventured on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @08:31AM
(#16265074)
For companies like Amazon, JP Morgan, Berkshire, it's blatantly clear they have a massive financial incentive to beat down the run-away cost of healthcare. They've got a million employees all up and down the economic tiers. It's a very big boon to their business, to have a smaller share of cost going into healthcare, where they can instead redirect that money into eg competing for labor with higher wages (especially relevant with the U3 at 4.1%).
Healthcare costs are so bad they're now a large, direct competitor to the Amazons and Berkshires and JP Morgans in a business well-being sense, as resources are finite. I like having these giants stepping up to the plate and targeting the healthcare system on cost. They tend to get their way; if a political rock (eg insurance companies) gets in the way, it'll get moved out of the way.
It reminds me of the 450 hospitals getting together to set up a not-for-profit generic drug company recently -
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/hospitals-plan-to-create-the...
But the same motive applies to co-ops. The member-owners of a co-op don't want their costs to be inflated by improper billing or inflated prices, because if they are able to reduce their expenses, then the member-owners benefit in the form of lower premiums.
In both cases, the shareholders want to get their money's worth, it's just that in the case of a for-profit company, those shareholders are often external investors, but in the case of a cooperative, all shareholders are also members.