Google - extend life, reduce costs of health care
- Life extension and health improvement: Calico (Google) and perhaps Vitamin D
- Note: A founder of Google is likely to get early-onset Parkinson's - which might be prevented by Vitamin D
- Health Insurance company still giving free Vitamin D to members who are deficient – Oct 2023
- $375 million increase in Oscar financing by Google in Aug 2018
Philanthropy
Gates - ALL LIVES HAVE EQUAL VALUE - $33 billion
- https://www.gatesfoundation.org
- COMBAT INFECTIOUS DISEASES
- Gates funding Vitamin D studies during pregnancy to improve growth– Dec 2012
- No benefit found when start Vitamin D supplementation at 20th week
Facebook: Curing, preventing, or managing all diseases "in our children's lifetime." $13 billion
- Mark Zuckerberg is selling up to $13 billion of Facebook stock to fund an ambitious project to end disease: Here's an early look inside Sept 2018
"CZI has been around now for about two and a half years, and has ballooned to 250 employees, with about half of them hailing from the technology sector" - https://www.chanzuckerberg.com/ "Chan Zuckerberg Initiative"
Employees/Employers
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan - reduce drug/healthcare costs for 1.2 million employees
- Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Try to Disrupt Health Care NYT Jan 30, 2018
- Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Name C.E.O. for Health Initiative NYT June 2018
Dr. Atul Gawande is a professor and practicing surgeon who has written extensively on health care He has a goal of reducing:
1) High administrative costs — taking middlemen out of the system.
2) Pricing failures — unit prices per product or service are too high.
3) Misutilization — wrong care pushing out the right care.
Health Transformation Alliance is a consortium of 47 employers trying to lower the costs of healthcare 7 million employees
Comcast is reducing Healthcare Cost of their 0.2 million employees - Aug 2018
- You’ll Never Guess Which Company Is Reinventing Health Benefits
While deductables are typically $1500 in other companies, Comcast lowered its deductible to $250 for most of its workers - " . . . roughly a fifth of big companies continue to see annual cost increases of more than 10 percent"
- Comcast increases only ~1% average is 3% annual increase
- Comcast is using such companies as (https://www.accolade.com/|Accolade]to help their employees understand options