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Surgeon Atul Gawande tapped to lead health care joint venture set up by Amazon.com, JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway

Last updated: 11:15 20 Jun 2018 EDT, First published: 10:58 20 Jun 2018 EDT

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Gawande is well-known for his medical writing in the New Yorker

Dr Atul Gawande, a surgeon and writer, has been tapped to take charge of the health care partnership being set up by Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A, NYSE:BRK.B).

In a bid to find a way to slash spiraling health care costs for their more than 1 million employees, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos moved to create a joint health care venture at the year’s start.

Read: Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon and Jeff Bezos to announce chief for new health care partnership, says CNBC

The new company that will be set up to spearhead the undertaking will be based in Boston and will “operate as an independent entity that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints.”

Gawande, who starts his new gig next month, is well-known for his medical writing in the New Yorker. He also still practices as a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital as well as serving as a professor at Harvard Medical School.

“I have devoted my public health career to building scalable solutions for better healthcare delivery that are saving lives, reducing suffering, and eliminating wasteful spending both in the US and across the world,” Gawande said in a statement first obtained by the news outlet The Hill. “Now I have the backing of these remarkable organizations to pursue this mission with even greater impact for more than a million people, and in doing so incubate better models of care for all.”

The efforts by Buffett, Bezos and Dimon to come up with a way to slash the cost of company healthcare has generated considerable buzz as their new joint venture may one day offer an industry-changing model that other companies look to for guidance.

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