Bezos, Buffett, Diamond, the Latest Newbies on the Health Care Block

I found it incredible that health care stocks tanked on Tuesday in response to an announcement from the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase CEOs that they were, as employer payers, going to become game changers in the health care market.

I have seen this movie before. Dozens of times over the last twenty-five years. The first time was when the leading employers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market began the same effort in the early 1990s. That, and any other such initiative I have seen over the decades, went essentially nowhere.

But, this week, reporters were agog with the notion that these titans of business were going to wade in and change the health care world. After all, together these companies had a combined population of a million-people covered under their health benefit programs.

That is about as many people as Rhode Island and Delaware Blue Cross combined cover. So, I am not quite sure how these CEOs will bring a game changing critical mass to any provider bargaining table.