Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon, partners
Dr. Atul Gawande — the prominent physician, prolific writer, and all-around health care celebrity — will become the chief executive of the new health care company launched by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase, the three companies announced Wednesday.
Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who teaches at Harvard's medical and public health schools, will take charge of the new organization July 9. In a note sent to friends and colleagues, Gawande said that he is not giving up his positions at Harvard or the Brigham and that he will keep writing, including for the New Yorker. But he said he will transition from being executive director to chairman of Ariadne Labs, which works on solving problems in health systems around the world.
The new company will be based in Boston.
[...] Not much has been revealed about the new health care enterprise from the three corporate giants; in the release Wednesday, it doesn't even have a name. The new organization is meant to come up with ways to address the health care costs for the companies' employees, though its founders have indicated they hope that it comes up with solutions that could be spread across the entire U.S. health system.
Also at CNBC and TechCrunch.
Previously: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase to Offer Their Own Health Care to U.S. Employees
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Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Disrupt Health Care
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase announced on Tuesday that they would form an independent health care company to serve their employees in the United States. The three companies provided few details about the new entity, other than saying it would initially focus on technology to provide simplified, high-quality health care for their employees and their families, and at a reasonable cost. They said the initiative, which is in the early planning stages, would be a long-term effort "free from profit-making incentives and constraints."
The partnership brings together three of the country's most influential companies to try to improve a system that other companies have tried and failed to change: Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world; Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett; and JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States by assets.
Various health insurance and pharmacy companies were hit by the news:
The move sent shares of health-care stocks falling in early trading. Express Scripts Holding Co. and CVS Health Corp., which manage pharmacy benefits, slumped 6.7 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively. Health insurers Cigna Corp. and Anthem Inc. also dropped. The health-care industry has been nervously eyeing the prospect of competition from Amazon for months. While the new company created by Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan would be for their U.S. staff only, this is the first big move by Amazon into the industry. The new collaboration could pressure profits for middlemen in the U.S. health-care supply chain.
Related: $54 Billion Anthem-Cigna Health Insurer Merger Rejected by U.S. Judge
CVS Attempting $66 Billion Acquistion of Health Insurer Aetna
By buying an online pharmacy allowed to deliver in all US states for a billion dollars, Amazon entered a new market and caused incumbents' stocks to plummet. The stock valuations of the traditional players lost 12.8 billion dollars just from the announcement.
Will Amazon help Americans afford their medications? How does it factor in with their announcing a combined healthcare provider with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway, and will it scale to the rest of us from there?
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday June 21 2018, @05:54PM (5 children)
I can see anything from corporate wellness campaigns writ large to actual evidence-based improvements coming from this.
I hope they find some good improvements to spread around, because with all the corporate parasites sucking the life out of healthcare, we need some.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 21 2018, @06:25PM (4 children)
The first improvement could have been to not have a C-suite.
If you're gonna have highly-paid people who expect incentives, that money must come from somewhere...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 21 2018, @09:24PM (3 children)
Well when you look at it now, ALL it HAS is a C-Suite.
The tendency I see here is the likelihood it will become cradle to grave health care by one company, managing your life, and telling you what you can't do, You won't be able to afford to change jobs. The Japanese system on steroids and raging.
They intend to cut out the middle men. Not content to get rid of Insurance companies, they also want to get rid of outside medical providers in just about every case. It will all be done In-Company. The Corporation will be Your God.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday June 21 2018, @09:43PM (2 children)
> The tendency I see here is the likelihood it will become cradle to grave health care by one company, managing your life,
> and telling you what you can't do, You won't be able to afford to change jobs.
How is that different from the pre-Obamacare system, exactly ?
Despite what the usual screeching crowd says, single-payer is freedom.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 21 2018, @10:08PM (1 child)
Very different.
There was a healthy private insurance market. (I'm still a rate payer there).
And you could change jobs with impunity - because if you had coverage - you were assumed to be insurable. And contrary to the bullshit the liberal press has been force feeding you there was also coverage for pre-existing conditions. My brother in law with Polio deformities never had a problem getting a job. Companies begged him to quit and come to work for them.
He has skills and brains and drive and charisma. He remained insured his whole life even when changing employers.
If you got none of those, don't be surprised if a job is illusive.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Thursday June 21 2018, @10:40PM
I like your alternative reality, can I move in, or will I lose my children at the gate?
I know too many people who were scared of losing their insurance, or lost the coverage they needed, or spent weeks delayed because they couldn't get the certificate of continuous coverage crap ... middle-class people with decent jobs.
My engineer coworker, whose wife needed leg surgery before they could get started on their second child, got delayed by paperwork for over a year, then he had to change jobs and she had to restart the paperwork from scratch, and by the time the surgery happened a couple years later, she was getting old enough to worry about the risks, and that kid never happened. Talk about the insurance company controlling your life !
I didn't need the press to tell me about those, thanks !
I forgot ... everyone else must be wrong, and the US is somehow the only place which has it right, maths and stats be damned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Thursday June 21 2018, @08:25PM
He wrote this article [newyorker.com], as an abstract of a well-received book [atulgawande.com] he authored. I frequently harrass people to read the article, as it tells a few stories of how medical care delivery has become more complex in recent decades, and benefits from approaches that don't have to do with medicine per se.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday June 22 2018, @12:37AM (1 child)
So this guy:
- Is an active surgeon
- Teaches at Harvard
- Is an author
- And is now taking on a CEO role for a new (presumably large) health care company
I can't see how there are enough hours in the day to be able to do all of these things well. If I were any of his employers, I would be very concerned about the potential impact to his performance from this sort of load. It makes me wonder whether this new "CEO" role will really just be a figurehead.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 22 2018, @01:17AM
He is dropping at least one of his roles:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]