text: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday announced a partnership to cut health-care costs and improve services for their U.S. employees. The announcement slammed the shares of multiple companies in the health-care sector. 
   
   The giant companies, which together employ more than 1.1 million workers, will launch an independent operation that's intended to be free from profit-making incentives. 
   
   The new company's goal at first will be to target technology solutions to simplify the health-care system. 
   
   Details of the new company were sketchy, with principals of Amazon, Berkshire and J.P. Morgan noting that the way it will work remains to be seen. They're hoping that their sheer size will help bring the necessary scale and resources to tackle the issue. 
   
   "The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett said in a statement. "Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we share the belief that putting our collective resources behind the country's best talent can, in time, check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes." 
   
   The announcement makes sense of Amazon's early moves in health care over the last year. It speaks to the desire to rip apart the traditional health-care system from distinctive silos. Experts have anticipated more deals and vertical integration in wake of CVS announcing its intention to buy Aetna. 
   
   Adam Fein, president of Pembroke Consulting, said it's "long past time" for employers like these three to force innovation into the health-care system. 
   
   "For better or worse, there are warped incentives baked into every aspect of the U.S. health-care system, from medical innovation to care delivery to insurance and benefit management," Fein told CNBC. "Rather than merely bashing the current system, I hope this new organization can help patients and their physicians make more informed and more cost-effective decisions. Technology will be necessary but not sufficient to make positive changes." 
   
   Analysts echoed the sentiment that the health-care system is outdated and ripe for disruption, paving the way for the new endeavor. However, they cautioned it could take time. Some experts are skeptical the three companies can meaningfully lower costs and improve outcomes. 
   
   "If this winds up being the low cost provider to make insurance more affordable at employer level, it could wind up being a real disruptive competitor to an industry that has not seen any new players in years/decades," Jefferies analyst Jared Holz told CNBC. "[I'm] not going to call this black swan event yet because there are few details and would be making too many assumptions but it has potential to be." 
   
   J.P. Morgan currently uses Cigna and UnitedHealth Group to administer health benefits on a self-insured basis and Amazon uses nonprofit Premera Blue Cross, according to Evercore analysts. Amazon uses ExpressScripts as its pharmacy benefits manager, said Leerink Partners' Ana Gupte. 
   
   Shares of Berkshire and J.P. Morgan fell slightly, while Amazon edged higher. 
   
   However, shares of health-care companies fell sharply. Express Scripts and Aetna sank 3 percent; Cigna slid percent while CVS and UnitedHealth fell 4 percent. 
   
   "Today's announcement by Amazon, J.P. Morgan & Chase company, and Berkshire Hathaway is clear recognition that the healthcare system needs to continue to create and deliver meaningful value to payors and patients," Express Scripts said in a statement."...We look forward to hearing more about this new initiative and how we can work together to improve health care for everyone." 
   
   Amazon in particular can play a strong role if it promotes a greater presence for technological advances including artificial intelligence and information sharing platforms into health care, said Idris Adjerid, management information technology professor at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. 
   
   "We find that technology initiatives which facilitated information sharing between disconnected hospitals resulted in significant reductions in healthcare spending," Adjerid said in a statement. "That said, it is unclear what the scope of this effort will be. If this partnership is to meaningfully improve healthcare delivery, it needs to include more than the employees of these companies." 
   
   The announcement was light on details but said three top executives, one from each company, will take the lead on the project: Berkshire investment officer Todd Combs, J.P. Morgan's Marvelle Sullivan Berchtold and Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon. 
   
   Combs was a hedge fund manager before joining Berkshire in 2010. Berchtold was previously global head of mergers and acquisitions at drugmaker Novartis before joining J.P. Morgan last year, and Galetti was FedEx's vice president for planning, engineering and operations before joining Amazon in 2013, according to their LinkedIn profiles. 
   
   "The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. "Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare's burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort." 
   
   
   
   "Our people want transparency, knowledge and control when it comes to managing their healthcare," said J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. "The three of our companies have extraordinary resources, and our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans." 
   
   Here's the full press release: 
   
   Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) announced today that they are partnering on ways to address healthcare for their U.S. employees, with the aim of improving employee satisfaction and reducing costs. The three companies, which bring their scale and complementary expertise to this long-term effort, will pursue this objective through an independent company that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints. The initial focus of the new company will be on technology solutions that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost. Tackling the enormous challenges of healthcare and harnessing its full benefits are among the greatest issues facing society today. By bringing together three of the world's leading organizations into this new and innovative construct, the group hopes to draw on its combined capabilities and resources to take a fresh approach to these critical matters. "The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we share the belief that putting our collective resources behind the country's best talent can, in time, check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes," said Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO, Warren Buffett. "The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare's burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort. Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner's mind, and a long-term orientation." "Our people want transparency, knowledge and control when it comes to managing their healthcare," said Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. "The three of our companies have extraordinary resources, and our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans," he added. The effort announced today is in its early planning stages, with the initial formation of the company jointly spearheaded by Todd Combs, an investment officer of Berkshire Hathaway; Marvelle Sullivan Berchtold, a Managing Director of JPMorgan Chase; and Beth Galetti, a Senior Vice President at Amazon. The longer-term management team, headquarters location and key operational details will be communicated in due course. 
   
   -CNBC's Meg Tirrell contributed to this report ||||| Amazon.com Inc., Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are forming a company to figure out how to reduce health-care costs for their hundreds of thousands of U.S. employees, the three companies said Tuesday. 
   
   “The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” Berkshire Chief Executive Warren Buffett said in prepared remarks. “Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable.” 
   
   ... ||||| This combination of photos from left shows Warren Buffett on Sept. 19, 2017, in New York, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, on Sept. 24, 2013, in Seattle and JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon... (Associated Press) 
   
   This combination of photos from left shows Warren Buffett on Sept. 19, 2017, in New York, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, on Sept. 24, 2013, in Seattle and JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon on July 12, 2013, in New York. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon and the New York bank JPMorgan Chase... (Associated Press) 
   
   This combination of photos from left shows Warren Buffett on Sept. 19, 2017, in New York, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, on Sept. 24, 2013, in Seattle and JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon on July 12, 2013, in New York. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon and the New York bank JPMorgan Chase... (Associated Press) This combination of photos from left shows Warren Buffett on Sept. 19, 2017, in New York, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, on Sept. 24, 2013, in Seattle and JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon... (Associated Press) 
   
   Amazon is diving into health care, teaming up with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and the New York bank JPMorgan Chase, to create a company that helps their U.S. employees find quality care "at a reasonable cost." 
   
   The leaders of each company, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Buffet, 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." 
   
   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. 
   
   Before the opening bell, eight of the top 10 decliners on the Standard & Poor's 500 index were health care companies. 
   
   The need for a solution to the health care crises in the U.S. is intense. With about 151 million non-elderly people, employer-sponsored coverage is the largest part of the U.S. health insurance market. 
   
   Health care costs for companies routinely rise faster than inflation and eat up bigger portions of their budgets. Americans are mired in a confusing system that creates a mix of prices in the same market for the same procedure or drug and offers no easy path for finding the best deal. 
   
   Employers have hiked deductibles and other expenses for employees and their families to dissipate the costs, which has hit Americans hard. 
   
   Only 50 percent of companies with three to 49 employees offered coverage last year, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. That's down from 66 percent more than a decade ago. The federal Affordable Care Act requires all companies with 50 or more full-time employees to offer it. 
   
   Amazon, Berkshire and JP Morgan say they can bring their scale and "complementary expertise" to what they describe as a long-term campaign. 
   
   Amazon's entry into the health market has been perceived as imminent, even though the company had announced nothing publicly. 
   
   It has been watched very closely on Wall Street, which as seen Amazon disrupt numerous industries, from booksellers to clothing and electronics chains. 
   
   Amazon, which mostly sold books when it was founded more than 20 years ago, has radically altered the way in which people buy diapers, toys or paper towels. Most recently it has upended the grocery sector, spending $14 billion last year for Whole Foods Market Inc. 
   
   ___ 
   
   AP writer Joseph Pisani contributed to this report from New York. Murphy reported from Indianapolis.
target: – "The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," says Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, and he has teamed up with some equally huge names in an attempt to go after said tapeworm. Amazon.com, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday announced that they'd be creating a company tasked with coming up with technological solutions that can cut health-care costs for their hundreds of thousands of US employees. "Our group does not come to this problem with answers," Buffett notes—nor, reports the Wall Street Journal, with details on how much it plans to spend, where the company's HQ will be, or how many of its own employees would be impacted—"but we also do not accept it as inevitable." What the companies' leaders did reveal is that the new company will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints." "The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty," says Jeff Bezos of Amazon, per CNBC, which notes the three companies employ a total 1.1 million workers, though that figure is not exclusive to the US. The AP reports it's unclear whether the trio would welcome other companies into the effort, but it does flag this line from JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon: "Our goal is to create solutions that benefit our US employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans." But they're not exactly benefiting Wall Street at the moment: Pre-market trading was unkind to health care companies, with the AP noting they represented eight of the 10 down companies on the S&P 500.