Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon.
CNBC
Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America’s most powerful companies to reduce costs and improve health outcomes, will close after three years, CNBC has exclusively learned.
The company began informing its employees on Monday that it will close at the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the case.
Many of the Boston-based company’s 57 employees are expected to be placed with Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase as the companies continue their efforts individually, and the three companies are still expected to collaborate informally on healthcare projects. said the people. .
The announcement three years ago that the CEOs of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase had joined forces to address one of the biggest challenges facing corporate America – high and rising health care costs for employees – caused shock waves across the medical world. Shares of healthcare companies tumbled on fears about how the combined power of technology and finance leaders could push costs out of the system.
The move to Shutter Haven may be a sign of how difficult it is to improve the U.S. healthcare system, a complicated and entrenched system of doctors, insurers, drug manufacturers and intermediaries costing the country $ 3.5 trillion every year. Last year, Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett appeared to be making the same point, saying this was no guarantee Haven would succeed in improving healthcare.
A major problem that Haven faced was that as the company came up with ideas, each of the three founding companies ran their own projects individually with their own employees, eliminating the need for the joint venture to begin with, the people said. who refused to be identified when speaking of the matter.
Brooke Thurston, a spokeswoman for Haven, confirmed the company’s plans to close, making this statement:
“The Haven team made good progress in exploring a wide variety of healthcare solutions, as well as trying new ways to make primary care more accessible, insurance benefits easier to understand and use, and make prescription drugs more affordable, Thurston said in an email.
“Going forward, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will leverage these insights and continue to collaborate informally to design programs tailored to the specific needs of our individual employee populations and locations,” she said.
This story develops. Please check again for updates.