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Amazon's Push Into Healthcare Just Cost the Industry $30 Billion In Market Cap (qz.com)
Today, Amazon, along with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan, announced a plan to launch an independent company that will offer healthcare services to the companies' employees at a lower cost. The venture, which will be managed by executives from the firms, will be run more like a non-profit, than a for-profit entity. Even though the plans are vague, the news caused the market value of 10 large, listed health insurance and pharmacy stocks to drop by a combined $30 billion in the first two hours of trading. Quartz reports: "The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," said Amazon's Jeff Bezos in a statement. "Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare's burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort. Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner's mind, and a long-term orientation." Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, likened America's mushrooming healthcare costs to "a hungry tapeworm on the American economy." How the venture will provide less pricy healthcare to the 1.2 million employees of the participating companies isn't yet clear. The new company will leverage "technology solutions" that provide "simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost." Not much else, including the name of the company, is known.
Let me restate that, you got caught responding to a headline after parsing it incorrectly and failing to read TFS or understand WTF you were talking about.
Then you replied to yourself trying to sweep your failure under the rug.
Let the "for profit" blood suckers get rocked on their heels a little. After all of the reasons that they have found to deny people care that need it, fuck those big boys.
The UK's system is widely recognised as the most efficient, so the basic model - of single payer contracting with controlled hospitals - has a lot of efficiencies to offer in the American context. In the light of the news that the arrival of an Amazon distribution centre LOWERS the wages of warehouse workers, perhaps we will see this happen to doctors...
https://www.economist.com/news...
The NHS costs rather less than half the percentage of GDP that the US system does and produces better health outcomes, with 100% free coverage for citizens.
Nice miss-interpretation, make a lot of money in the industry do you?
As I am *sure* you know, your example is BS.
There is plenty of competition at the staff level, so income is in general sensible.
There is practically NO competition at the insurer/provider level. This has been remove from the system through regulatory capture and other techniques for a lot time now, and the price is being paid.
If there is no competition, then the consumer suffers, and 'suffers' in the context of health is, eventually, dies early.
So, the cost of the high profits of insurers and providers is the deaths of consumers.
Care to try and defend that?
The only two solutions are enforced REAL competition (which does not mean two 'friendly' huge providers colluding), or state regulation of prices.
My buddies an I often sit in front of the fire and solve the worlds problems. Healthcare is one of my favorites. We like to look at what exactly causes the high costs and address them one at a time... (Completely ignoring things that work or don't in other countries, because those are saved for discussions like "what works and doesn't in other countries") Here are some of our ideas relating to healthcare.....
Tax rebates for high cost medical equipment. This addresses the high costs of medical equipment at least a little, and helps maintain profitability in creation/manufacture/research of said tech.
Transparent pricing, no hidden fees, like every damn thing else traded for American dollars. That $.03 asprin is only $25.00 because you can't just say "no thanks, I can't afford that today.", so the market will bear any price. If it's painful, good, get your shit together healthcare. It's damn sad that I can check the costs of airfare across nearly an entire industry run mostly by brain-dead customer service people (which is also bogged down with massive regulation hoops and legal liabilities) in two minutes, but an industry run by over-schooled and highly paid professionals who are often smarter than I am can't seem to write a complete legible sentence or count past $100.00 without the insurance mans help.
Free government funded tuition for in demand medical field studies, paid for by taxes paid on medical practitioners earnings. (much like the industrial taxes I pay now pretend to cover industrial overhead) This addresses the licensed doctor shortages... For profit schools will love this shit, and the socialized education camp gets a win. Free doctor/nurse/med-tech/ect... training!
Immunity to malpractice accusations and court nonsense on all non-trivial procedures. People are going to die under the knife. You can choose to just die, or ask for help. With transparent pricing and lower overall prices, it's on the consumer to do their research when seeking a "family doctor". This all but eliminates the insurance against insurance bullshit driving costs through the roof. Personal responsibility time folks. Buyer beware. I know a LOT of people that travel to other countries to have medical procedures done and take a vacation while there- for half the price of half the care in America. They do their research before they buy a ticket. Seems to work.
State level cooperatives negotiating pharma prices, which are allowed to shop outside of the country. This addresses 500% increase games on life-saving drugs due to the captive market, and ends the market for smuggling life saving drugs that is fueling organized crime. This is so fucked up by the way... and also leads to the next one....
University and government funded research CAN NOT BE PRIVATE. Breakthroughs and moonshots in the medical field should be shared if funded on the public dime, and works and studies encouraged. Patents never granted on medicines derived from government (citizen) funded research. I've never understood how breakthroughs achieved and sciences explained/attained at state universities is not public by default. Who in the hell came up with the current system and how can they sleep at night?
I'm just another nerd pissed off about 15k emergency room visits and $30000 stillborns. I have no idea how these things would pan out, but nobody else ever seems to put forward any ideas addressing what seems to me to be the sources of the high costs of care that require the money sucking insurance companies to begin with. You gotta do more than creative accounting to fix this, and lives are at stake.
I imagine Amazon will drive costs down by sheer volume, access to data, simplicity, reliability, and scope of options. (Based on your shopping habits, you might also like.... a colonoscopy! available from these practitioners...)
The only thing more fun to discuss than American healthcare is American law enforcement. Hooo-boy do the tempers flare on that one.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I am skeptical that Amazon et al will be successful in this, but I wish them well. If the politicians can't fix healthcare, many nerds can.
This has been done before, Kaiser about 80 years ago. They created their own medical care for on the job heavy construction site injuries, doctors with modern and sufficient equipment to stabilize the injured so they could be transported to a "big city" hospital. This quickly expanded to cover health care in general. Then it expanded to cover the worker's families too. And now we have a major non-profit healthcare provider covering the western US.