Former Medicare chief Andy Slavitt has added two partners to his new venture capital firm, which aims to find profits in serving the poorest, sickest and most vulnerable Americans.
Slavitt's Town Hall Ventures is officially launching this week at HLTH, a health-care conference in Las Vegas. Joining Slavitt are Trevor Price and David Whelan from Oxeon Partners, a New York-based company with an executive search and investment arm.
Town Hall got its name from a series of visits Slavitt made to town halls across the country to answer questions about the Affordable Care Act, as President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans aimed to repeal and replace it last year. Slavitt, who ran Medicare under President Barack Obama and helped implement the ACA, was a vocal advocate of upholding the legislation, known as Obamacare.
Slavitt, who lives outside of Minneapolis, has no interest in jumping into the fray of Silicon Valley health-tech investors, who have sought outsized returns in wellness apps, tools for urban professionals and technologies that provide an alternative to seeing a doctor in person.
"We're looking to get away from the 35-year-old white guy theory of investing," Slavitt told CNBC.
Rather, Slavitt said he's looking for investments in companies that are trying to improve lives for the most at-risk populations. That includes entrepreneurs seeking solutions to end the opioid epidemic and those targeting mental health, loneliness, maternity, kidney dialysis and care to people in the earliest and latest stages of life.
