3 US firms to create company providing employees with healthcare

Three giant firms in the US -- Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase -- announced on Tuesday their intention to create a company that will provide healthcare for their US employees.

A joint statement by the three companies from their respective main offices said the "independent company" will provide high-quality healthcare at a reasonable cost, Efe reported.

"The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," said the founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, in a joint statement.

The company will bring together the worldwide giant of electronic marketing, Amazon, the number one banking group in the US, JPMorgan Chase, and the multinational financial consortium, Berkshire Hathaway, directed by billionaire Warren Buffett.

"The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Buffett said.

"Our people want transparency, knowledge and control when it comes to managing their healthcare," added the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon.

They gave little in the way of details about this joint effort, but did confirm that the company will be a non-profit organization and that a first stage will be focused on technological solutions for offering healthcare to their US employees.

To start, each company has appointed one of its directors to the new healthcare company: Todd Combs from Berkshire Hathaway, Marvelle Sullivan from JPMorgan and Beth Galetti from Amazon. To be announced later will be specifics about the company headquarters and operational details.

--IANS

qd/