Amazon.com Inc., Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. said they plan to collaborate on a way to offer health-care services to their U.S. employees more transparently and at a lower cost. The three companies plan to set up a new independent company “that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints,” according to a short statement on Tuesday.
The health-care industry has been nervously eyeing the prospect of competition from Amazon for months. While the new company created by Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan would be for their U.S. staff only, this is the first big move by Amazon into the industry. The new collaboration could pressure profits for middlemen in the U.S. health-care supply chain.
Health-care spending was estimated to account for about 18 percent of the U.S. economy last year, far more than in other developed nations. Despite efforts to curb costs, studies suggest that U.S. doctors and hospitals continue to provide too much health care. In a survey of physicians’ perspectives published last year in the journal PLOS One, the average estimate was that 20 percent of medical care was unneeded, including about a quarter of tests, a fifth of prescriptions and more than one in 10 medical procedures.
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