Amazon Health
6th February 2018
Ben Thompson’s Stratechery is a must-read site for tech industry analysis. This review of the Amazon/Berkshire Hathaway/JPMorgan Chase announcement, and its implications for the future, is a well-reasoned look at what might be going on here.
Imagine Amazon doing to health care what it did to publishing. One of the chief defects in the American health care system is lack of transparency — people can’t price shop because they don’t know, and in many cases can’t get, the actual prices charged for their health care because people aren’t the customers, insurance companies and employers are the customers; people are just the patients. (Nobody bothers telling your cat how much the vet charges, because the cat is not paying the bill.)