JPMorgan CEO on new healthcare partnership: ‘We simply want to do a better job’

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, offered some insight as to why the banking giant is getting involved in healthcare through its partnership with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway: lowering healthcare costs and improving outcomes for its employees.

In an interview with Business Insider, Dimon said U.S. healthcare has both the best and worst of “all worlds,” with higher costs and less preventive medicine than other countries. As a self-insured company, he said JPMorgan is spending $1.5 billion on medical costs every year and “we simply want to do a better job.”

That’s where he reached out to Berkshire’s Warren Buffett and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

“And in conversation with Warren, and someone who works for him called Todd Combs, who's one of my board members, who's exceptional, and Jeff Bezos, we said we know we can do more,” Dimon said. “We know we can do more just thinking through every single part of it. Both the customer-facing part so you might be able to get look at more data on your phone and stuff like that, getting you do wellness.”

While Amazon’s disruptive reputation caused lots of speculation about the partnership’s impact on the larger healthcare system, analysts had a mixed reaction to the news, since the idea of self-insured companies forming a large group purchasing organization has been tried before.

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