"Shares in health care companies took a big hit in early trading Tuesday, hinting at the threat of the new entity to how health care is paid for and delivered in the U.S."

And may reform follow. The story is at AP, Strib carrying the feed or you can websearch for a different post, but the headline is from the middle of the report. And it resonates. Perhaps toward great good. Perhaps to another same-old reach to fleece us over healthcare; a new entrant to the trough vs. a white knight change of paradigm. We will have to wait and see whether this image from atop Strib's coverage represents system-change innovation or just three already over-wealthy stooges chasing yet another buck. One bet, some of both at play. Another bet would be to see a rebound in those shares noted in above headlining. A short term market shift and adjustment, with long term uncertainty about that which is new and possibly different.

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Early text from the report:

The leaders of each company, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Buffett, and JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, offered few details Tuesday and said that the project is in the early planning stage.

"The ballooning costs of (health care) act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Buffett said in a prepared statement. "Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable."

The new company will be independent and "free from profit-making incentives and constraints." The businesses said the new venture's initial focus would be on technology that provides "simplified, high-quality and transparent" care.

It was not clear if the ultimate goal involves expanding the ambitious project beyond Amazon, Berkshire or JPMorgan. However, JPMorgan's Dimon said Tuesday that, "our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans."

A will of large business entities to look for something better than the established for-profit insurer offerings looks a lot like an armada wishing to avoid pirates. May they succeed at that, and then grow to benefit all in the nation, keeping the non-profit orientation stated early in their game. A non-profit oriented private sector delivery system nationwide would be a viable challenge to government provided healthcare as a right, the private sector always arguing it is more nimble and intelligent than "bureaucrats." If these three can quickly prove such a mythology true, bless them. However, the nation needs something better than the status quo; it being overdue but health industrial complex players and their lobbyists have tllted the nation away from the sane choice. There is nothing graven in stone carried down from a mountain by Roy Moore that says government cannot provide a floor for everyone while a single well-motivated and decent private firm cannot provide diversity. Just get the UnitedHealth pack genre of leeches out of things, and flowers will bloom and every day will be sunny.

UPDATE: Readers are strongly urged to read the entire AP[Strib] report, as it has content well beyond the headline and the quoting. An ultimate decoupling of employment and having healthcare coverage is likely to happen in the nation, sooner or later. A single tax change, making such coverage non-deductible for employer-corporations and at the same time making it an added part of income to employees would kill it instantly. Such a reform would have many crabbing and moaning, but it's a bias in the market, with a history. It may have outlived some of its earlier post-WW II purpose.