Sometimes even big, powerful monopolies are incapable of overcoming the contradictions of their own system. According to a report in the NY Times, Amazon’s effort to re-invent employer based health care coverage, which briefly knocked down insurance industry share values, has died. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett’s conglomerate) and JP MorganChase bank had announced a join venture in 2018 called Haven. [Buffett, Bezos and Chase’s Jamie Dimon are pictured above in an AP photo.] It was designed to start with their own employees, and work out from there to tecniques and a “product” that could streamline health coverage. But it died a quiet death in January.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/business/haven-amazon-berkshire-hathaway-jpmorgan.html
Excerpt:
A joint venture formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to explore new ways to deliver health care to their employees is disbanding, according to a short statement on its website. The company, Haven, will cease operations at the end of February — three years after its arrival sent shock waves through the health care industry.
“Haven explored a wide range of health care solutions, as well as piloted new ways to make primary care easier to access, insurance benefits simpler to understand and easier to use, and prescription drugs more affordable,” the statement said. …
But two people familiar with the collaboration said logistical hurdles had made it harder than expected to come up with new ideas that made sense for all three companies.
Berkshire Hathaway, one of the people said, had a wide variety of systems for administering health care at the companies it owns, so across-the-board changes were difficult even internally. And JPMorgan funds its own health care plan for its employees, which posed a challenge to applying ideas that could work for Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway.
A NY Times tech newsletter takes matters further:
| There have been news reports that Amazon has dreams of heavily automated stores and plans to eliminate cash registers in lots of places. Maybe Amazon wants to use its grocery outposts as prep centers for deliveries of fresh fish and dish soap. |
| This is where I add that it’s possible I will look like an idiot for writing this. Groceries, robots for the home, pharmaceutical drugs and health insurance are all areas worthy of innovation. It’s just helpful to think of Amazon’s efforts as experiments — sometimes bad ones — rather than fully baked marvels of creation. |