From HEALTH PLAN WEEKLY
Amazon, Berkshire
Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s plans to jointly launch an independent
health care company worried some stakeholders, while delighting others.
"We welcome
anybody pulling on our end of the rope in this tug of war," CEO Rob
Andrews of the Health Transformation Alliance (HTA), a group of more than 40
major employers, tells AIS Health.
The three titans
issued a jointed statement Jan. 30, saying they are "partnering on ways to
address healthcare for their U.S. employees, with the aim of improving employee
satisfaction and reducing costs." They stressed its initial focus
"will be on technology solutions."
Many analysts saw
tremendous potential behind the Amazon-led alliance. "At a minimum [it]
gives them more power in holding their existing payer vendors more accountable
for health and cost outcomes for their employees....Expand this to the number
of captive and loyal customers these firms collectively touch and you suddenly
have the possibility of this becoming a huge disrupting development," says
Maulik Bhagat at AArete.
But some doubted its
impact. Bob Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, LLC,
said the combined workforce of 1 million for the three titans amounted to a
small Blue Cross Blue Shield Plan. He also noted that the data technology focus
is nothing new.
Despite the different
views on such moves, there is consensus that the pace of innovation in the
private health care sector continues to quicken. The time to innovate is
tightening from the current three- to five- year timetable down to 18 to 24
months, says Ashraf Shehata, an industry consultant for health plans.
Shehata also describes
the move by Amazon and its partners as a potential new model in the health care
industry, with "employers coming together with unique assets and driving
innovation for employees as a precursor to their own commercial interests."
https://aishealth.com/archive/nhpw020518-01
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