Surgeon and writer Atul Gawande will become the CEO of a new nonprofit healthcare venture based in Boston.
Medical ethicist Art Caplan joined Boston Public Radio Thursday to talk about Gawande’s new role in a venture involving Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan. The three companies will be combining their healthcare systems to provide coverage to employees.
“The companies are saying, ‘We want you to have an entity that you experiment with, deliver cheaper costs of healthcare to us and we’ll give you, basically, a million [employees] between all the companies and things that we own and a lot of money,’” Caplan said. “‘You figure out ways to try to get good coverage and drive costs down.’”
Caplan said he sees the value in Gawande working on this project, which will likely include technological solutions. He called Gawande “one of our smartest thinkers in healthcare.”
“I don’t think single-payer is on the horizon, so let’s see what this can do,” said Caplan.
Gawande is a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He’s also a prolific writer— he’s written about healthcare for The New Yorker, among other publications.
Despite Gawande’s strengths, Caplan also also ruminated on the downsides of the three companies working together to design healthcare for their employees. He said Gawande’s creative background could be both a benefit and a limitation, since he hasn’t worked in big business before.
Caplan also said there are inherent flaws in a market-driven healthcare system.
Medical Ethicist Art Caplan is head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center and the co-host of the Everyday Ethics podcast.
