Rethinking health care from a corporate position
A press release published yesterday sent shockwaves throughout the US healthcare industry: Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, with a combined total of more than one million employees, have proposed a joint initiative to improve healthcare for their employees and family members, increasing satisfaction and peace of mind while at the same time reducing costs.
The news, which explains some of Amazon’s earlier moves in this regard, is being posited as health care disruption and hit the share value of health insurers hard: the main change the initiative proposes is to lower costs by acting as a non-profit company to improve service and eliminate the anxiety and problems many employees currently experience. This means moving from a model where everything is about making profit for insurers to focusing instead on the health of workers and their ability to generate value for their employers. What might be the consequences on privacy or the relationship between workers and their employers when the latter is not only providing health insurance but peace of mind? Does it make sense for your employer to take care of your health and that of your family? Would employees agree to share their medical data with their employers if it brought them more efficient and better health care?
