Can Three of America’s Most Innovative Business Minds Really Transform Health Care?
<p>We don’t yet know how the recently announced health care collaboration between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase will help these firms’ employees gain lower-cost, higher-quality care. But in an op-ed published today in <em>The Hill</em>, Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D., says that despite their size, the three companies simply don’t have enough market power to bend the national health system to their will.</p><p>The new venture might be able to achieve lower prices through joint purchasing efforts, such as for prescription drugs and devices, Blumenthal says. </p>
<p>“It is good to know that the best, most innovative minds in American business are taking on the challenge….But if companies this rich, smart and powerful don’t succeed, we may be forced to accept solutions that work quite well in most of the rest of the industrialized world, solutions that depend more on government and achieve better outcomes than the United States currently does at a fraction of the cost.”</p>