Cheryl Pegus, the executive vice president of health and wellness at Walmart, has left the company and will join JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s Morgan Health venture as managing director, with aims to improve employer-sponsored healthcare.
Dr. Pegus will work closely with Dan Hartman and Jeff Ries, who lead Morgan Health’s ventures and investment efforts. As part of its mission to improve employer-sponsored health care, Morgan Health is investing $250 million of JPMorgan Chase & Co. capital to help scale promising companies focused on driving greater accountability in health care.
To date, Morgan Health has deployed $105mm in four early-stage companies: Vera Whole Health, Embold Health, Centivo and LetsGetChecked.
A year ago, Walmart Health was rapidly adding new executives to its leadership team to provide the business with a jump-start coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic and to help the division gain traction in meeting its objective of high-touch, in-person care.
In 2021, JP Morgan Chase launched Morgan Health, a new business unit focused on improving health care for 285,000 employees and dependents covered by JPMorgan’s health insurance plan, as well as the millions of people in the U.S. with employer-sponsored insurance. Morgan Health followed the discontinued business of Haven, which was shut down in early 2021.
Morgan Health has a much more simplified business structure, as it is a unit of JPMorgan Chase. Also, it has a philosophy of initiating partnerships to meet its goals rather than working from the ground up.
Approximately 305 million receive medical coverage from U.S. health insurers. Employer-groups continue to be the leading source of health coverage in the U.S., covering approximately 175 million people.
Employer-group, self-funded contracts continue to remain popular amongst employers as they can be more cost effective than risk-based plans. Self-funding is specifically common among larger companies as they can disperse the risk of expensive claims over many workers and their dependents.
Takeaway: In addition to her new role at JP Morgan Chase, Cheryl Pegus will continue to serve as a senior advisor to Walmart