How Will Atul Gawande's Politics Play into CEO Position?

As he takes the helm of the Amazon-backed healthcare project, will Gawande's opinionated political nature be a corporate asset or impediment?

Monday marks Dr. Atul Gawande's first day leading the Amazon–Berkshire Hathaway–JPMorgan Chase healthcare venture aimed at improving the American healthcare system.

For nearly three decades, Gawande has been one of the most influential physicians and healthcare writers in the country, impacting prominent policymakers and business leaders alike.

"The Cost Conundrum," Gawande's 2009 article in The New Yorker, played a critical role in shaping President Barack Obama's view on reforming healthcare as his administration worked to pass the ACA. The report also caught the eye of Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett's longtime investing partner.  

Related: 4 Insights from Atul Gawande's Influential 'Cost Conundrum' Article

Nearly a decade later, Gawande's influence on health policy, connections to industry power players, and personal political views hold serious weight as he assumes his new position.

Gawande himself briefly entertained a political career, earning a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and working as a health policy advisor for both then-Sen. Al Gore and then-Gov. Bill Clinton before continuing to serve in the White House.

Despite his role in Washington, Gawande returned to Harvard and practiced medicine, telling The Independent, "I didn’t like the idea of my future being dependent on politics."

However, Gawande's writings for The New Yorker and public statements on social media about the Trump administration and health policy proposals, could factor into how the highly anticipated project attempts to fix healthcare costs.

Longtime Trump critic

As evidenced by his social media activity, Gawande frequently criticized Donald Trump throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and the first 18 months of his presidency.

• "The arc of history is long, but at times it bends toward madness," Gawande tweeted the morning after Trump was elected president.

• Gawande was among 16 writers who contributed their thoughts to The New Yorker on what Trump's America would look like in November 2016.

• Gawande criticized Trump's alleged conflicts of interest two days into office, tweeting "MDs face stricter ethics."

• Gawande also referred to the administration's Muslim ban as "religious persecution."

• Following the Senate's failed vote on the "skinny repeal" of the ACA, Gawande tweeted, "I have little hope Trump can lead on this."

• In light of the Charlottesville riots last August, Gawande tweeted that Trump is "simply unfit for office."

• Gawande also criticized the administration's efforts to assist Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, tweeting that Trump is "all but saying some Americans lives are worth less than others."

• Later that same day, Gawande added, "There is nothing consistent about Trump’s policies except incompetence, moral indifference, and destruction."

Skeptical of single payer

President Trump is not the only subject of criticism from Gawande, as he has also expressed dissatisfaction with the proposal for a single payer government-run healthcare system.

• In a January 2009 article for The New Yorker entitled "Getting There from Here," Gawande referred to single payer as a "siren song."

• Gawande also stated that supporters of single payer "reserve special contempt for the pragmatists, who would build around the mess we have."

• "Grand plans admit no possibility of mistakes or failures, or the chance to learn from them," Gawande wrote. "If we get things wrong, people will die. This doesn’t mean that ambitious reform is beyond us. But we have to start with what we have."

• In May 2016, Gawande also tweeted, "The costs of rapid transition to single payer are either much higher or more disruptive than advocates acknowledge."

Politics of the project leaders

Gawande's politics are of interest because of his immediate role leading the new organization, but the financial backers of the project also have publicly and financially expressed their own political preferences over the years.  

• Dimon has been a longtime donor to the Democratic Party, including support for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though he described himself as "barely a Democrat" in 2012.

• Additionally, Dimon participated in the White House's Strategic and Policy Forum to advise President Trump, though he withdrew and the group eventually disbanded after Trump's comments about the Charlottesville riots in August 2017.

• Buffett was critical of Trump as a candidate but has been more reserved in his public critiques since he took office. Buffett was also a vocal campaign supporter of both Clinton and Obama.

• Bezos is relatively apolitical compared to his peers but nonetheless has been the subject of several critical tweets from Trump regarding his ownership of Amazon and The Washington Post.

• In December 2015, Bezos jokingly propositioned to send then-candidate Trump into space on a rocket he owned.

• Despite the public war of words, Bezos did attend the first meeting of the American Technology Council roundtable hosted by the White House in June 2017.

Related: What's Next for Atul Gawande as CEO of Amazon-Backed Healthcare Initiative?

Questions that remain

The political ideologies of Gawande and the business leaders behind the new healthcare project are well-known but still leave questions about what they will mean for the organization going forward in a highly politicized climate.

• In May, Alan Murray, president of Fortune, wrote in Time that CEOs taking political stances in the current era "risk alienating customers and adding to polarization."

• Murray added that the decision to separate business from politics has "clearly moved," though he said several CEOs are working to "understand where the new line should be drawn."

• A 2017 study by researchers from the University of Mississippi and the University of Texas at Austin looked into the connection between a CEO's degree of political liberalism and subsequent impact on the organization.

• The study found that the degree of political liberalism positively impacted the organization's rate of new product introductions (NPI) and was associated with higher stock return volatility.

• Additionally, the impact of CEOs' political liberalism on NPIs was weakened by low CEO power, high CEO equity-pay ratios, and economic boom.

• A 2013 study by the Samuel Curtis Johnson College of Business at Cornell University found CEOs with liberal ideologies are also more likely to emphasize corporate social responsibility than conservative CEOs, even when financial performance is low.

• The Cornell study also indicated that a CEO's political ideologies are "more widely consequential" due to their significant relation to corporate political action committee allocations.