Rather than mimicking Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway's joint venture Haven, former Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said he's focusing on the healthcare presence of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, according to Yahoo Finance.
“[Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’] move to do HSAs and FSAs through the cloud on his site is a bigger deal than anything Haven’s done,” the CEO told Yahoo Finance in an interview. “His idea to go buy PillPack is not about buying drugs. It’s about getting into the home.”
Mr. Bertolini hypothesized that one of the reasons healthcare is so expensive in the U.S. is because of the lack of home health.
“We can do more in the home around providing services, nutrition. I can prove it economically. You can take care of people’s transportation, food, fuel and socialization in the home, particularly seniors, for cheaper than it is for one or two [emergency room] visits,” he said.
Home healthcare was one of the reasons Aetna merged with CVS.
“We got to do something in the community where we can get people into the stores, have the stores reach out to the community as a way of finding better ways to take care of people, keeping them away from the system,” Mr. Bertolini told Yahoo Finance.
Haven was created to solve critical issues within healthcare, according to Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.
“The plan is to support a very, very, very good thinker on this subject, who’s a practicing physician, and who commands the respect of the medical community too,” Mr. Buffett told Yahoo Finance. “In effect, figure out some way so that we can deliver even better care and have people feel better about their care, too. They have to perceive that they’re receiving better care, over time. And stop the march upward of costs, relative to the country’s output.”