Disruptors vs Destroyers

 The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.

Billionaire Investor Warren Buffet

The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty… Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare’s burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort. Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner’s mind and a long-term orientation.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO

Our people want transparency, knowledge and control when it comes to managing their healthcare… [Our] goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans.

Jamie Diamond, JP Morgan CEO

Healthcare absorbed 6.9% of a much smaller GDP in 1970. By 2016, the “ballooning tapeworm” sucked down 17.9% of a much larger (even corrected for inflation) GDP, continuing the American legacy of the most expensive healthcare system on earth. Our $3 trillion/year healthcare system is a mess. As Republicans refused to extend the expected adjusting/fixing legislation to improve the Affordable Care Act, choosing instead to trim its scope and coverage, millions of those who had just been able to get healthcare under that plan now face losing coverage… again.

Too many Americans are not even aware that these cutbacks have already occurred, as the chart on the right (from the Kaiser Family Foundation) illustrates. So many will soon be slammed by the obvious impact of these reductions. What’s worse those GOP/Trump “trims” are effectively creating a ripple of higher premiums and deductibles even for those who can afford the coverage.

There is no question that the United States will inevitably have universal healthcare for all of its residents… and eventually will lose its questionable status as the only developed nation in the world without such a program. Eventually but no time soon. The GOP, now faced with paying for those massive corporate tax cuts, seems dedicated to making sure not only that such expanded coverage never gets implemented but that social plans like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid get sliced and diced as well. You only have to listen to GOP House Speaker, Paul Ryan, whose “gotta cut social spending” statements have been anything but subtle. So the Trump/GOP controlled federal government are healthcare program destroyers, and there is no leadership in a gridlocked Congress to support an alternative and viable healthcare system.

It is horribly clear even to the mavens on Wall Street that denying coverage, excluding millions from access to health insurance, and watching mounting medical-cost bankruptcies accelerate, constitute one of those powerful angry grassroots forces that cannot be stopped… one that could create business-threatening chaos across our entire business sector. To make matters so much worse, the new tax reform act imposes severe negative consequences on the same over-taxed blue states (by denying the deduction of state and local taxes against federal tax obligations) that were most likely to fill the void and create alternative healthcare systems at a state level. That anomaly could just push that blue-state healthcare initiatives beyond affordability.

Enter the healthcare disruptors. While their initial efforts will focus only on their direct employees only, a new consortium of private employers might just create a new healthcare system that could well become the future program for all of us: “Three of the nation’s most formidable companies — Amazon.com, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. [JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Berkshire CEO Warren Buffet are pictured above] — sent shock waves through the healthcare industry Tuesday [1/30] by announcing a joint plan to reduce healthcare costs for their U.S. employees.

“Although the companies said their focus mainly would be on providing improved healthcare for their own U.S. workers, which total nearly 1 million, the move immediately triggered speculation that any solutions they develop could spread throughout the industry.

“That sent healthcare, drug and health-insurance stocks tumbling even though the three companies provided few initial details about their venture, with investors guessing that the trio’s initiative eventually could crimp sales growth and profits for others in the healthcare field.

“Consumers might see a benefit if the companies could develop a blueprint for curbing the surge in healthcare and drug costs while maintaining or enhancing patient care, a scenario that government and the industry so far have struggled to achieve…

“The three said they would start ‘an independent company that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints’ and that its early focus ‘will be on technology solutions’ that would provide ‘simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.’” Los Angeles Times, February 1^st.

Given Amazon’s massive retail understanding, Buffet’s amazing array of high-profile companies and JP Morgan’s mega-deep financial pockets, you can bet that prescription drug prices will be negotiated severely downward, software efficiencies will be incredibly sophisticated  and effective (read: a spate of genuine cost-saving tracking technologies), and that medical practices will be reconfigured. The companies understand that Congress, as it is set now and is likely to be configured for the foreseeable future – particularly under a Trump legacy – is simply unable to solve this nation’s most pressing issues, especially those surrounding healthcare. Solution: ignore the destroyers and become the disruptors on that rather clear and obvious march to universal healthcare.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am deeply saddened by the fact that Congress and the President have so completely failed in serving average Americans that even rich plutocrats have to take the situation in hand and force solutions to our most obvious and pressing problems.