The health care industry has been on edge over the past year as reports have surfaced laying out Amazon’s interest in disrupting the sector. On Tuesday, Jeff Bezos’s company perhaps gave industry leaders a reason to worry.
The e-commerce giant announced plans to work with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to create a new health care company with the aim of “reducing healthcare’s burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families,” Bezos said in the announcement.
The three companies said the “initial focus of the new company will be on technology solutions that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.”
The announcement proclaimed that the company would be “free from profit-making incentives and constraints,” but an Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on whether the entity would be a nonprofit.
The companies said the initiative is in the early planning stages, so few other details were released.
Still, the announcement comes at a tumultuous time in the U.S. health care industry as the future of the Affordable Care Act remains in question while medical costs continue to rise.
As such, even without many details, the news had an immediate impact on sector leaders; UnitedHealth’s stock was down 7 percent in pre-market trading, while Anthem and Cigna each fell 5 percent.
