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“The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy" is how Buffett put it in the six-paragraph news release
“医疗保健膨胀的成本就像一条饥饿的绦虫蚕食着美国的经济。”巴菲特在一条长达六段的新闻里如是说到，
that offered no blueprint but what Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called “talented experts, a beginner’s mind and a long-term orientation.”
尽管该报道并没有透露任何计划，亚马逊创始人杰夫·贝佐斯还是评价到，“我们有本领高强的专家，有不变的初心，也有长期定位”。
You can see where this is going.
我们可以看出这件事情的走向。
Shop for a piece of furniture online and the seller explains why it can offer a quality sofa at a reasonable price by listing the half-dozen middlemen it’s cutting out:
网购家具时卖家会给你解释他们如何通过剔除六家中间商来提供物美价廉的沙发的。对这些中间商他们是如数家珍：
retail warehouse, retail store, wholesaler warehouse, wholesaler showroom, export agent.
零售仓库，零售店，批发仓库，批发展厅，出口代理商。
It may not be possible to list the intermediaries milling about between a patient and a healer,
尽管我们可能无法列出盘桓在患者和医生之间的所有中间商，
but David Cutler, a health economist at Harvard, made the striking calculation that administration accounts for about a quarter of the cost of health care in the U.S.—
但哈佛大学的卫生经济学家大卫·卡特勒（David Cutler）还是得出了一个令人惊讶的计算结果：政府的医疗开销在美国医疗保健费用中占了将近四分之一——
perhaps double the rate in the next-most-benighted system.
这一比例可以说是在腐败程度上仅次于医疗的行业的两倍。
He once pointed out that Duke University Hospital had 900 beds and 1,300 billing clerks.
他曾经指出，杜克大学医院有900个床位，1,300个帐单文员。
None of this qualifies as news.
这些问题都已不新鲜。
What does is the prospect of a new sensibility addressing the mess.
真正值得让人注意的是试图解决这一混乱的新办法到底有多大前景？
Bezos became the richest man in the world in no small part by exploiting and inventing technology, like “one click.”
贝佐斯能成为世界上最富有的人，在很大程度上都因归功于“一键下单”（即亚马逊）之类产品的开发和技术发明。
His approach is to undercut the competition at every turn—
他的办法是抓住一切机会削弱对手的竞争力，
cutting prices so low that customers were reliably pleased, and vendors had no choice but to stock his shelves.
大幅降价让客户切实感到高兴，同时让供应商除了给他供货别无选择。
Many of the company’s half-million employees work among those shelves at the “fulfillment centers” all across the U.S. where boxes are packed and shipped.
该公司五十万员工,其中有很多人都在这些岗位上工作，在美国各地的“装货中心”进行包装和运输。
A warehouse worker might make $15 an hour, better than retail but not enough to make anyone rich,
仓库员工每小时可能挣15美元，虽然比零售商好点，但也谈不上富有，
especially after taxes and health-insurance premiums, which have been rising faster than wages.
特别是扣了税和医疗保险费以后，而这两项的费用上涨的速度比工资要快。
If the triad of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase can find a way to bring sense to health care,
如果亚马逊，伯克希尔·哈撒韦和摩根大通的三位一体有办法让医疗保健变得合理，
the savings will accrue first for those three companies, which are not acting out of altruism.
收益首先惠及的是这三家公司，这就不再是利他主义了。
But sometimes business interests align with human ones.
然而，也有商业利益与人的利益相吻合的情况。
Every dollar matters to an hourly worker,
对小时工来说，每一美元都很重要，
and when the savings from a better health care system reach the worker and when the worker reaches a doctor without having to run a gauntlet
当医疗保健系统的存款能够惠及他们，当他们不必再为就医遭受指责，
the vaunted, disruptive efficiency of tech will have produced a common good.
效率破坏力十足还被大肆吹嘘的技术就算是造福万民了。
