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A new venture capital firm co-led by former CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt will seek to invest in healthcare technology and service companies that deliver innovative care to low-income, high-needs populations. Town Hall Ventures will focus on building companies that provide higher-quality and lower-cost care for poor, underserved communities, particularly involving Medicare, Medicaid, risk-based care, complex care and the social determinants of health. Its leaders see a big opportunity to improve care for the 120 million people in Medicare and Medicaid through innovations such as better models for delivering care at home or in other comfortable and low-cost settings. (5/8)

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. (Farr, 5/8)

"We are at the beginning of a wave of innovations serving Medicare and Medicaid populations," Slavitt said in a statement. "Town Hall is being formed to help lead this massive and necessary shift. "While at UnitedHealth Group, Slavitt oversaw the portion of the Optum health services division that rescued the HealthCare.gov website following its disastrous rollout during the fall of 2013. Later, he took a job with the Obama administration, serving as acting administrator of the massive federal agency that runs the Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs. (Snowbeck, 5/8)