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, is dissolving after three years, CNBC has learned exclusively.
The company began to inform employees on Monday that it will close at the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Many of the 57 workers at the Boston-based company are expected to be placed on Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase, as companies progress individually in their efforts, and the three companies are yet to collaborate informally on health projects, people said.
The announcement three years ago that Amazon CEOs Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase teamed up to tackle one of the biggest problems facing corporate America – high and rising healthcare costs for employees – sent shock waves across the world of medicine. Shares in healthcare companies have fallen on fears about how the combined strength of technology and finance leaders could drive costs out of the system.
The move to closing Haven may be a sign of how difficult it is to improve American health, a complicated and entrenched system of doctors, insurers, drug makers and intermediaries that costs the country $ 3.5 trillion every year. Last year, Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett seemed to point this out, saying there was no guarantee that Haven would succeed in improving health.
An important issue faced by Haven was that, while the company came up with ideas, each of the three founding companies carried out their own projects separately with their own employees, eliminating the need to start the joint venture, according to people, who refused to be identified by talking about it.
Brooke Thurston, a spokeswoman for Haven, confirmed the company’s plans to close and issued the following statement:
“The Haven team has made good progress in exploring a wide range of health solutions, as well as testing new ways to make primary care easier to access, insurance benefits easier to understand and use and prescription drugs more accessible, “said Thurston for email .
“Moving forward, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will leverage these insights and continue to collaborate informally to design programs tailored to meet the specific needs of our populations and individual employee locations,” she said.
This story is developing. Please check again for updates.