Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Photo: Leah Puttkammer / Getty Images
Three of the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the U.S. — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase — are starting a new health care company. Details are thin, but the new entity will be “free from profit-making incentives” and focus on employer-based health benefits, the companies said in a statement.
Why it matters: The health care industry was already beside itself over the prospect that Amazon, on its own, might enter the pharmacy business. Amazon along with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan can bring to bear resources that few existing companies have the power to match.
Key quote: “The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable,” Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett said in the statement.
The details: There aren’t many, but the announcement says this new entity focuses on “technology solutions that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost,” beginning with the companies’ own workers.