JPMorgan Takes Another Crack at Healthcare, Starting With Its Own

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is trying again to transform U.S. healthcare, just months after ending a joint venture with Amazon . com Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. that was supposed to do the same.

The nation’s biggest bank is building a new unit that will work on health initiatives for its employees and invest $250 million in startups and technologies meant to make their healthcare more efficient and effective. The unit, dubbed Morgan Health, aims to create a model of employer-sponsored healthcare that results in better and more equitable care at a lower cost.

That is similar to the original goal for Haven, the venture that JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon launched with fellow CEOs Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett to much fanfare in 2018.

Haven disbanded in February. The three companies struggled to create a system that worked for all of their hundreds of thousands of employees in different jobs across the U.S. A planned data-sharing effort that was meant to help lower costs ran into privacy barriers.

Mr. Dimon includes the healthcare system on his list of policy failures that he says are a drag on the U.S. economy. The bank covers the healthcare for about 285,000 employees and dependents in the U.S.