Jamie Dimon Rejoins the Health Fight Warren Buffett Fled
While Warren Buffett knew when to give up on reforming America's gargantuan health apparatus, Dimon and JPMorgan are taking another crack at it.
Jamie Dimon, the Sisyphus of health care?
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Jamie Dimon can't quit his health-cost crusade, even if Warren Buffett can. On Thursday, JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced that it was launching a new unit called "Morgan Health" to tackle the high cost and poor performance of U.S medical care. The move comes just a few months after it gave up on Haven, a hyped joint venture with Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. and Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. aimed at the same problem.
JPMorgan may have learned some lessons, but the fundamental strategy is very similar: to test out innovative health-care ideas on the bank's workers and then use what it learns to help other companies and lower costs. However, American health care isn't uniquely expensive because wealthy corporations aren't smart enough. The real culprit is a series of large and intractable policy problems. They’re a big reason Haven never got off the ground. And they are why Morgan Health is likely to struggle as well.