They said the initiative, which is in the early planning stages, would be a long-term effort "free from profit-making incentives and constraints."
Huge. This could give affordable health care in America the kick in the butt it needs.
These are not really companies that know anything about health care. These are companies that know about moving large piles of money around and siphoning some of it off. (Oh, and one company that knows about how to get people working under miserable conditions to shuffle around piles of assumed-identical small commodities.)
Not holding my breath, but I bet the stocks see a bump.
Amazon Prime now includes free 2 day delivery to an ER; they come, pack you up, and deliver you by UPS, or in some cases Amazon Delivery Services, in which case you will be delivered unless they lose you.
Semi-universal and mostly not for profit.
Everyone knows the real solution but for some dang reason, they just keep avoiding it?
And then of course there is nation wrecking Trounce, that figures out what the best road forward is and what the people want and then does the exact opposite.
This might put pressure on some of the established names in health care in the short term, but the end result will likely be further consolidation and costs passed onto patients.
That phrase jumped out at me too.
I dunno. Not sure what to think of this odd consortium and whether it in fact could come up with something that would NOT be profit-making. Guess I’ll wait and see.
Shares in health care companies took a big hit in early trading Tuesday, suggesting the threat of the new entity to how health care is paid for and delivered in the broader economy.
I really hope this brings about positive change. There’s no excuse for what’s going on here, when one of the richest countries in the world can’t provide affordable health care to its citizens. The health care industry isn’t going to change without “help” or better legislation.
I’m also glad to see it and think it has a lot of potential.
Kind of reminds me of what I saw on 20/20 or 60 minutes Where they looked at how several countries around the world did health insurance. As I remember it and have mentioned before, and someone corrected a bit so feel free to correct again, in Germany they have several non-profit companies that provide insurance with their incentive to do a good job being they can pay their employees well. I’d assume they are well regulated and that it’s mandatory for Germans to have insurance from one of those companies.
Nice to see these rich folks that talk about caring are going to put some of their money where their mouth is!
Sorry, dream on. Just a version of the company town. Enslavement here we come.
We’re doomed!
Okay, you stick to your nightmare, and I’ll keep dreaming.
Dismiss it completely because the current health insurance companies are doing such a great job now.
Yes, let’s do that.
Great idea. We need more innovation in health care delivery. Our health care delivery system is broken and needs reform.
I hope they open up medical schools through their philanthropy also. There is a serious shortage of doctors.
There are some rich folks that like being rich, but don’t mind sharing with others from their pile as they know they will still have more than enough money to do what they want as well as getting happiness helping others.
And all for $99 a year.
One other thing: if this is truly all in the planning stages, we shouldn’t hear anything more about it for at least a year, maybe two or three.
Yes, here in Germany there is no “national health service” but rather “state-regulated” healthcare providers (a significant percentage of Germans get their health ins from one). “State-regulated” has similarities to Obamacare in that profits are limited (I have gotten refunds a couple of years). A significant advantage is that you pay more into the pool while you are working, but when you retire your premiums drop (I think it’s to something like 15% of your retirement income, but don’t quote me on this) but you get the same care as before. Thus, you don’t run into the problem of half of your retirement going for premiums.
There are also “private” insurers, which sucker people in young with lower premiums than the state-regulated, wait until it is too late to shift to the state-regulated ones (about age 50, to insure that you have paid into the pool sufficiently long), then they start jacking the prices up, so that people in retirement pay much more than with the state-regulated insurers.
However, most people do their homework and go for the state-regulated ones.
Thanks for the insight!
As we say here, “gern geschehen…”
Y de nada?
My son’s living in MX to try and become fully fluent in spanish but had german roommates during his study abroad in Peru. He’s working on his german but he feels it’s really complex compaired to spanish and especially english so he’s not very hopefully at ever getting fluent in it.