Amazon-Berkshire-JP Morgan Healthcare Venture “Haven” Disbanding

Today the Amazon-Berkshire-JP Morgan healthcare joint venture called “Haven” announced that it will be shutting down.

Exactly three years ago, the three corporate giants came out with great fanfare forming Haven as a nonprofit health care plan which aimed to provide better health care services and insurance at a lower cost to employees. The plan was to eventually offer solutions beyond to other firms with the ambitious goal of lowering healthcare costs in the broader economy.

None of this happened and concerns about this initiative lowing the cost of medical devices never materialized.

Things got off to a slow start with the first milestone taking nearly two years to complete. By late 2019, Haven was only starting to offer health insurance plans for a fraction of the employees at the three partner companies. Throughout its efforts to make progress, Haven was plagued with problems such as overlap with Amazon’s own internal healthcare initiatives.  The company was also experiencing constant executive turnover which ultimately included the departure of its CEO Dr. Atul Gawande who stepped down in May of 2020 but remained chairman of the board.

In a plainspoken message on the company’s homepage, Haven says it will cease operations in February. In a hopeful email communication to employees, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that “we’re going to take insights we’ve gained through our joint-venture and build on them.”