Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon want to lower health care costs for their companies' employees…a total of more than one-million people.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the healthcare industry employed about 12.4 million people as of 2015.
In 2016, it’s reported that the healthcare industry represented almost 18-percent of the US economy. That’s about $10,000 per person.
“For years, other industry giants have tried to get into this thing and failed miserably. But, I think if the climate is right here for this whole idea, that if we’re smart about this and we put our heads together, we can really start to drive down costs and utilization of our employees,” said healthcare reform expert
Seth Denson.
The cons:
Disruptions in the marketplace could mean some growing pains, trickling down to the retail and tech industries.
In the prescription drug market is that 85 percent of all drugs are managed by three main distributors—two of which are owned by insurance companies. If they notice their products dropping, the con would be a temporary inflation in prices.
The pros:
In the long term, however, hopefully that will drive prices down.
If this is a success, will get the ball rolling and others doing the same thing.
“This is an extremely uncompetitive market place that owns over a sixth of the US economy and is growing into being even more of the economy over time,” said Denson.
Denson said any entrance of competition into the marketplace is a good thing.