Amazon’s health care experiment shows exactly why we need Medicare for All
We have to remove profit from the health care equation, just like Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase intend to do.
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Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase announced last week that they would be forming a new company aimed at reducing employee health care costs. This decision was a response to what small, mid-sized and large business owners and CEOs have known for a long time: The private insurance system is strangling the U.S. economy.
As the founder and CEO of a mid-sized company that employs 180 people in the United States, I know this well. In 2018, we will pay $2.8 million to insure our workers and their families. Year after year, we have wrestled with the costs of our health care plans. And despite trying every trick in the book, our per-employee costs have tripled over the past 14 years.
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To put it another way, we are paying $13.50 per hour per employee just to cover the health care benefit. It’s a model that’s completely unsustainable, and needs to change.
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In announcing the new partnership, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett called the costs of healthcare “a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.” He’s right. But, combined, these three companies employ about 1.1 million people. Even accounting for dependents, this new company will, at best, serve 1% of the population. I’m looking for a solution that would help the other 99%: Medicare for All.
In the United States, we rely on private, for-profit insurance companies to finance our health care system. Over 157 million Americans are getting their coverage from employer based plans. Another 21.9 million have purchased insurance individually.
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It is no coincidence that while health insurance companies are using hundreds of billions annually for their own sales and marketing, administrative overhead and profits, we are suffering under the most complex and expensive system in the world.
This is an existential threat to our businesses and our economy.
The high costs of health care, fueled by the profit motivation in the private insurance system, can be directly linked to the decreased take-home pay for workers; businesses not having capital to expand to new markets, create new jobs, or invest in new technologies; and medical bills as the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States.
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Richard Master is founder and CEO of MCS Industries, executive producer of multiple documentaries on the U.S. health care system, and founder of the Business Initiative for Health Policy.