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Location: San Ramon, Seattle, Anchorage, Reykjavik
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UNC4Me
Actually yes, there can be a question. They're forming a NON-PROFIT company to provide their combined 1 million US employees with high-quality, affordable healthcare. Not a lot of detail on how they plan to do this, but whatever they do it's clear they've given up on the traditional ways employers attempt to manage healthcare costs and are open to other solutions.
Disruptive innovation is typically a good thing, even when it comes from huge companies.
Love it. Neither government nor the health care / big pharma / insurance business can solve it so new thinking is brought to bear. We'll see how it works out.
So Amazon, a company with eight names and the largest investment banker in the world walk into a bar... if only it were a joke.
Can there be any question that this trio of titans sees "healthcare" as a product that needs only the most efficient and profitable packaging? Not a service. No connection to anything humanitarian. Just a business segment that can rearranged into corporate/production structure that delivers as little as it has to, to as many as possible, and with optimized profits at every turn?
I'll put my cards on the table here: healthcare should be a strictly not-for-profit endeavor. Period. Pay each participant and provider according to their contributions and value, but not one dime out the top or to stockholders. Double period.
The only thing Amazon, backed by investment titans, can do is package and sell healthcare as an array of products, using its massive and invasive marketing expertise and tools like big data to make sure every "customer" is sold the maximum they can be sold. It's the last turn of the screw US healthcare has been screwing us with, reducing us to no more than blank-faced consumers of what is not a consumer product.
We will never have the healthcare a wealthy, civilized country deserves until the last profiting entity is out the caregiving game, and costs for products are controlled by rational means.
Amazon and friends are the diametric opposite of that in every possible respect.
Now they are diversifying their cartel - from Banking to Healthcare
I wonder why 7 million citizens of the UK have private health insurance? Even more odd is when we didn't hear a peep out of the Lefties, when evil Amazon bought their favorite grocery chain. Maybe it was obvious, even to them, that prices would come down, which they did, many overnight. With zero loss of quality.
Nothing like someone who can vociferously argue that I said exactly what I said.
Since you can't distinguish between "nonprofit" and "not for profit" yet choose to continue arguing the (wrong) point... I'll just move on. It's been fun.
Stop acting like a child. You don’t want anyone involved in healthcare that might make a profit. I disagree. As said before, Your point is absurd.
Your problem is you have been caught yet again making a comment that you cannot support with facts. I have asked you several times to support the following comment:
“In pharma alone, the single drive is increased profits through new, patentable drugs that are often no better than the generic standbys they replace - they just generate C-level and stockholder wealth, and vast piles of it.”
I gave you the list of the top pharmaceutical products. Now back up your statement. Tell us which products are no better than generics. Certainly someone with your superior intellect can provide us with the head to head, double blind, placebo controlled trial data, that supports your conclusions. While you are at it, you can fill us in on your medical credentials that give you such insights in which you believe that all these medical professionals have been duped into prescribing products that “often” add no benefit to their patients over a less expensive generic products.
Oh, by the way, docs know plenty about generics. Depending on the source, 84-89% of all prescriptions are filled with generics.
Sure. Not a lick of self-interest there for themselves, their stockholders, their captive supply chain and every entity with a financial stake in any part of this. They're just going to throw half a trill at it out of goodness of their hearts, bless 'em.
you don't say. Oh, wait... they didn't say. What's next, a fix for education that that fits on a matchbook cover and a plan for world peace that involves humming with your eyes closed? Hey, it's the trumpification of PR-driven self-aggrandizing philanthropy!
It can be. But there is no reason to suspect anything good will come from this effort, unless you're an investor who has private health care lined up. Remember the supergenius from Apple who completely destroyed JC Penney? He didn't even understand a different branch of consumer retailing, much less the difference between selling junk and treating illness. So, same thing, x10^10th here.
Hyperbole aside, at least they're going to attempt to explore controlling healthcare costs by cutting out the middlemen (insurance companies). Something the ACA failed to do what with those companies funding the campaigns of those who wrote it.
While the ACA made insurance available to some who didn't have access prior (a very good thing) it has done nothing to make it affordable despite it's nifty name. Unless you happen to be someone who gets a heavy subsidy courtesy of other enrollees and even then it's not affordable should you need to use it.
And remember, should they come up with some solid ideas, the government can always swoop in and either kill it (at the behest of the insurance companies) or claim them as their own and maybe use them to make that first A actually mean what is says.
Amazon isn't inventing anything. Any health insurance company already encourages you to do Rx through the mail rather than in a brick & mortar pharmacy by offering a discount. I can phone or videoconference with a NP and get an antiviral Rx if I have the flu. Large employers offering concierge services where you can get the normal GP/Internal Medicine services at your office building is hardly new. Big employers self-insuring and contracting out services isn't new. They'll likely add remote diagnostics that aren't generally used today. The flip side is I'd bet the human for all the remote stuff is going to sit in Bangalore or some other low labor cost place. Those same people who provide lousy customer support will be doing medicine.
Stop acting like a child. You don’t want anyone involved in healthcare that might make a profit. I disagree. As said before, Your point is absurd.
Your problem is you have been caught yet again making a comment that you cannot support with facts. I have asked you several times to support the following comment:
“In pharma alone, the single drive is increased profits through new, patentable drugs that are often no better than the generic standbys they replace - they just generate C-level and stockholder wealth, and vast piles of it.”
I gave you the list of the top pharmaceutical products. Now back up your statement. Tell us which products are no better than generics. Certainly someone with your superior intellect can provide us with the head to head, double blind, placebo controlled trial data, that supports your conclusions. While you are at it, you can fill us in on your medical credentials that give you such insights in which you believe that all these medical professionals have been duped into prescribing products that “often” add no benefit to their patients over a less expensive generic products.
Oh, by the way, docs know plenty about generics. Depending on the source, 84-89% of all prescriptions are filled with generics.
He shoots... He Scores... AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!!!
Unless you happen to be someone who gets a heavy subsidy courtesy of other enrollees and even then it's not affordable should you need to use it.
This isn't entirely true.
The heavy subsidy comes from all the taxpayers regardless of whether they are an ACA enrollee, and depending on your circumstances (income relative to poverty level) can be affordable should you need to use it.
It's not really news. Self-insurance has been around forever, but it's usually limited to one employer, a labor union, or a group of companies in an industry.
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