While the President Sleeps, Amazon Conquers Healthcare

Prior to the Presidential election in 2016, POTUS Donald Trump promised to make healthcare affordable for all Americans. Throughout 2017, many healthcare bills were proposed but all of them were flawed and failed to pass into law. While the healthcare system continues to suffer its same dysfunctional course, the lawmakers have largely abandoned ship and are doing nothing to repair it.

There are some who may dispute the fact that it is the government’s responsibility to fix the system, the fact is that they contributed a large part in creating the dysfunction. While some people may shout against Obamacare blaming it for problems we are now seeing, the fact is that it started long before. We all saw how the federal government based reimbursements on the fatally impaired SGR (Sustained Growth Rate) they devised to control costs on medical reimbursements. Every year, the legislators scrambled to make am overhaul to the SGR, costing taxpayer money and doing little more than pushing the problem into the following year. We now have all kinds of regulations dreamed up of and enforced by politicians: Meaningful Use, MACRA/MIPS, HIPAA, and more. My opinion is that the government should have never put their hands into the healthcare system to begin with.

To be fair, not all the problems in the system are federally created. Others who played a part in building the debilitating of our current system include for profit insurance companies, profit driven pharmaceutical companies, a whole multitude of vendors trying to make a buck off the system, and hospitals who we all know have outrageous charges. For them, it is business as usual, patients’ lives not considered in their quest for padding their bottom-line.

Earlier this year Amazon teamed up with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase to offer a reasonably priced healthcare insurance to their employees. This merger is being watched closely by Wall Street as well as everyone in the healthcare system. While its future direction is still unclear, many experts are predicting that it can disrupt the health insurance industry. The founders of this merger claim their focus will be on technology.

As US healthcare spending increases faster than the rate of inflation, our current health insurers have failed to cut costs without negatively affected their profit margin. It is interesting to note that this new venture will start out as a non-profit and cover 500, 000 of their employees.

Why this merger may be a good thing?

  • Our system is broken and cannot continue the way it is. We need change and our politicians failed to come through with one.
  • Costs to the system are often driven by corporations trying to drive up profits. If they create a system that is not for profit, that would eliminate the conflict of interest that I believe now exists when making coverage determinations for medical services.
  • Medicine has turned into a business and those controlling it (third parties) are not as business savvy or looking at the larger economic picture.
  • Being the leading business leaders in the US, they could potentially cover many more lives at lower costs to the patients (decreased premiums and deductibles).
  • They add an element of competition to the market. Consumers are no longer forced to choose between just a few high cost options.

However, we need to watch with a wary eye that what is starting out as a needed disruptor to theĀ  crumbling structure of our healthcare system doesn’t turn into a monopoly with absolute power over patients lives. Despite the fact that healthcare is the biggest sector of the American economy and that it is now a big business, we must remember what is at stake here: patients’ lives.

 

 

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