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Illustration by Elias Stein
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Investors trembled in January 2018 when three corporate giants,
Berkshire Hathaway,
Amazon.com,
and
JPMorgan Chase,
announced a joint venture aimed at reducing workers’ health care costs. No one knew how they planned to do this, but the news took the S&P 500 Managed Health Care Index down 4.4% in one day.
Three years later, the trio have now closed the JV, known as Haven Healthcare. In a statement, Haven said it has “explored a wide range of healthcare solutions, as well as tested new ways to make primary care easier to access, insurance benefits simpler to understand and use, and more affordable prescription drugs ”. The Managed Care Index rose 2.2% on the afternoon the news broke.
Haven said little. In November 2019, Bloomberg News reported that Haven was testing a plan with JPMorgan employees without deductibles and offering employees benefits to meet their health goals. This seemed to suggest he was exploring alternatives to cost sharing, a popular strategy to contain costs that some employers have started to fear is counterproductive. But Haven has never spoken publicly about the project.
Instead, most of the news has focused on arrivals and departures. In July 2018, Haven hired Dr. Atul Gawande, surgeon and author of healthcare books, as CEO. In May 2019, the COO left after nine months and a year later Gawande stepped down as CEO. Haven’s demise could speak to the challenge of corporate collaborations; CNBC reported that stakeholders put his ideas into practice separately. But Haven’s fight also underscores a truth: It’s hard to cut health care costs.
Last week
Rise above it all
Another year on the stock market was marked by political turmoil, and stocks initially experienced the biggest drop since October. Then came the elections in Georgia and the Capitol Riot. Yields and Treasury stocks rose, despite the chaos, thanks to new enthusiasm for a unified government and more relief. However, jobs fell for the first time since April. Over the week, Dow industrials rose 1.6% to 31,097.97; the S&P 500 rose 1.8% to 3,824.68; and the Nasdaq Composite rose 2.4% to 13,201.98. Bitcoin has exceeded $ 40,000.
Blue georgia
In the second round of elections in Georgia, two Democratic candidates, Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, edged Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Both victories gave Democrats control of the Senate. President Trump turned the situation upside down by claiming that Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia was rigged. With the Senate in hand, President-elect Biden said he would appoint Federal Appeals Judge Merrick Garland, whose Supreme Court appointment was blocked by a GOP Senate, as attorney general.
The crowd at the door
A crowd claiming electoral “theft”, drawn to Washington and encouraged by Trump and his allies, stormed the Capitol on Wednesday as Congress met to certify the Electoral College. As they passed the Capitol Police, they broke into the offices and chambers of the House and Senate. Earlier in the week, Trump urged Georgian officials to ‘find’ him enough votes to win the state, but he was pushed back. After the riot, Congress confirmed Biden’s victory, calls for Trump’s impeachment increased,
Facebook
blocked his account until the end of his mandate, and
Twitter
suspended it permanently.
Lame Duck Policy in China
The New York Stock Exchange canceled its delisting from Chinese stocks
China Mobile,
China Telecom,
and
China Unicom (Hong Kong)
after consulting with regulators, then reversed the reversal, citing the Treasury. The order stemmed from a ban on Chinese companies with military ties or not in accordance with US accounting standards. The White House also banned eight Chinese payment apps, including Alipay, and weighed in by adding
Ali Baba
and
Tencent
to the blacklist.
Behind the curve
Covid continued. The most contagious variant of the virus sparked fears when it emerged in the United States and the vaccine was launched. In the United States, hospitalizations set a record 128,000 and exceeded 4,000 daily deaths on Thursday.
Annals of negotiation
Entain,
who owns bookmaker Ladbrokes, rejected an $ 11 billion offer from
MGM Resorts International.
MGM shareholder
IAC / Interactive
has agreed to spend up to $ 1 billion on the offer …
UnitedHealth Group
agreed to pay $ 13 billion for a healthcare technology provider
Changing health care.
..The Wall Street Journal said that
Year
will pay “significantly less” than $ 100 million for Quibi content.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]
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