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Healthcare in the United States is complicated with lots of different players. The article seems to hint at a key issue they faced: >But insiders claim that it will allow the founding companies to implement ideas from the project on their own, tailoring them to the specific needs of their employees, who are mostly concentrated in different cities. Medical services is mostly a localized service, so each city is its own individual market. As large as Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire are, their employees are spread out geographically, and even in their headquarter cities, they do not represent a significant number of people negotiating for medical services. Without a way to control the actual medical service supply (i.e. doctors and hospitals), their programs will have to negotiate at market rates, meaning there really is no way to achieve significant savings. Amazon released their pill pack service, which helps because drugs can be shipped across the country, so there are efficiencies to be gained there. However, drug costs are still a smaller percentage of overall costs [0], albeit growing. [0]https://www.ama-assn.org/about/research/trends-health-care-s... |