Amazon’s movement into healthcare makes the choice of Philadelphia for Amazon’s HQ2 look even more clear.
Today’s piece in the Seattle Times about Amazon’s increased investments in healthcare makes my suggestion that the choice for HQ2 will be Philadelphia clear.
Amazon Healthcare is going to be BIG business. HQ2 will need space as big as HQ2 and it will need great ties to the healthcare industry. Besides two great universities (Penn and Princeton). Philly is close to several of the headquarters of drug companies. Pennsylvania, for its part, has world class (at least by American standards) public healthcare systems including Geisinger Health System in northeast and central Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) in western Pennsylvania. Geisinger Health System is especially interesting because it not only serves 3 million residents but it has become a pioneer in using modern data, genetics and clinical data, via its Center for Health Research and a collaboration with Regeneron that is unique.
Opposition to Philadelphia from gay activists could sink that city’s chances.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/11-amazon-hq2-final-cities-in-states-lacking-lgbt-discrimination-laws.html
Figure 2: Poverty Rates by Race/Ethnicity and Age in Pennsylvania, 2014 While the overall share of Pennsylvanians living in poverty is slightly lower than the national average (13% vs. 15%), Pennsylvania has wide disparities in poverty rates by race/ethnicity and age. In Pennsylvania, Blacks and Hispanics are approximately three times as likely as Whites to be poor (Figure 2). As in most other states, children in Pennsylvania are substantially more likely than adults to live in a poor household. As of 2014, almost one in five (19%) Pennsylvania children under age 19 was living in poverty, compared to one in ten nonelderly adults (11%) and 8% of adults age 65 and older. Population Health Pennsylvania falls below national averages in rankings of state population health.