Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan Pick CEO for New Health-Care Company

By Aisha Al-Muslim

Amazon.com Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have appointed surgeon Atul Gawande as chief executive of their newly formed partnership to address U.S. employee health-care.

The appointment of Dr. Gawande, a globally-renowned surgeon, best-selling author and public health researcher, is effective July 9, the companies said Wednesday. The new company will be based in Boston.

Dr. Gawande practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and is a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. He is founding executive director of the health systems innovation center, Ariadne Labs, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.

In January, the three companies announced they teamed up to figure out how to reduce health-care costs for their hundreds of thousands of U.S. employees. The companies said the entity would operate independently and be free from profit-making incentives and constraints.

In February, The Wall Street Journal reported some health-care companies had complained to JPMorgan about the bank's involvement in the health-care partnership, worried that it could cut into their business. JPMorgan CEO James Dimon got involved personally, speaking with some health-care executives to allay fears that the bank would become their rival, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The three companies together have more than a million employees, though not all of them work in the U.S.

Write to Aisha Al-Muslim at aisha.al-muslim@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 20, 2018 10:34 ET (14:34 GMT)

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