WASHINGTON, D.C. Jan. 30 (DPI) – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, and Jamie Dimon’s JP Morgan Chase are teaming up to create a non-profit health care organization for their employees – a long-overdue shot across the bow of the nation’s politically protected, for-profit insurance cartel.

All the major media outlets treated the announcement as big news, and readers, while supportive, generally voiced dismay that some form of non-profit care could not be implemented for everyone. “What about the rest of us?” wrote one.

It’s still not entirely clear what the three corporations – which together employ 1.2 million people – have in mind, and Bezos himself is quoted as saying “The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty.”

Adds Buffett:  “The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable.”

Some pundits took pleasure is seeing major health-care stocks plummet in value today.

The three most popular comments on NYTimes.com:

It is quite apparent what is happening: cutting external costs to maintain profits. Insuring a relatively healthy population and owning your own two million dollar CEO will result in two things: saving corporate dollars and siphoning resources off the rest of the community. Who would want that Amazon plant now?
I’ve been an MD in rural America for many years and have seen plan after plan, PPO HMO ACO, come and go. I’ve seen great big schemes at controlling cost without lowering costs or improving medical care. Switching profits to a not for profit or for profits is still the same dollars. Internalizing profits is a normal corporate MO which will not help the community around the behemoth and is not meant to.
I’m surprised Mr Buffett would not be spending his energy and resources for a system which would help everyone: universal coverage. That means Medicare for all.

It is unclear if this article pertains to a plan to provide insurance only to employees of these large companies or to innovate ideas and methods for universal health care?
Please continuing reporting on this initiative. We don’t need more insurance companies, we need universal health insurance.
I would like to see Mr. Buffet, Mr. Bezos and Mr. Dimon, as well as others like Mr. Gates and Mr. Zuckerberg (and their companies) team up with Physicians for a National Health Program (pnhp.org) and use their talents, resources and money to outline and deliver Universal Health Coverage for all Americans.

How about those that do not work for large corporations, those that are self employed, those that do not get health insurance from their employers, those that are retired, yet have not reached 65 to get medicare? Does anyone worry about them?