Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan haven't said much about what their new joint venture will do to "provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high quality and transparent health care at a reasonable cost."

It's not hard to imagine, however, how the three companies could set up a large, closed system that could serve as a blueprint for the only disruptor with the ability to fix the entrenched, inefficient U.S. health care system — the U.S. government.

The worst thing the joint venture could do is try to use its bargaining power to bring down costs within the existing system. It's not really big enough for that. The three partners have a combined 1 million employees; the health care industry is the biggest employer in the U.S., and even if you add in the family members of Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan employees, that won't be enough to go head to head with the medical juggernaut on doctors' and nurses' pay and the cost of pharmaceuticals. The partners need to start from scratch.

It's well-known that the U.S. leads the world in health care spending but not in life expectancy. But the U.S. health care system is inferior to those of other rich countries on a number of technical parameters, too: For example, it has more hospital admissions for preventable diseases and more medical and lab errors than comparable countries. It ranks 30th in the world on "basic physical and mental health, health infrastructure and preventative care" according to last year's Legatum Prosperity Index.