In 2018 Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan announced a secretive project to take on the failing healthcare system in the US. Ultimately, this project would be named “Haven” in 2019.
While there is probably too much gridlock and corruption in Government to tackle this issue alone, a good faith, profit driven effort in the private sector can surely begin the process of a functioning healthcare system.
Affordability has created a market where many people have plans which function as catastrophic coverage – while general health and wellness is a luxury. The usual suspects are at fault – having a consumer driven system driven by a 3rd party payor clearly misaligns stakeholders. Insurance companies locking down physician practices with contracts that create an opaque pricing structure makes matters worse – there is so much to be unwound and the beneficiaries of this bad system want to keep this chaos going.
With the help of government deregulation and market forces, perhaps a safe Haven for people in need can be found. The consumerization of Healthcare can be seen in places such as Urgent Cares of Minute Clinics. The pricing is mostly transparent – the service is good and efficient and it works like any other free enterprise system works.
With Amazon having ~90million Prime subs, a nice added feature could be a fairly priced health insurance product. The recent acquisition of PillPack further positions Amazon to penetrate the Pharmacy business.
With an acquisition of CVS, Amazon will buy (on the cheap), access to ~10k retail outlets which are being outfitted with Minute Clinics (see primary care physician shortage), SmileDirect as well as Caremark and most probably Aetna (assuming no last minute hearings cause an issue).
With 3 US Corporate powerhouses at the forefront – there is hope. The average citizen is terribly underserved in healthcare regardless of how advanced the system is and many lives have been destroyed financially.
The time to act is now – the rewards are great. Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Jamie Dimon – save this country.