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The most powerful woman in business wants ‘radical change in the health care system’

By
Nicholas Gordon
Nicholas Gordon
and
Alan Murray
Alan Murray
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By
Nicholas Gordon
Nicholas Gordon
and
Alan Murray
Alan Murray
Down Arrow Button Icon
October 10, 2023, 5:24 AM ET
CVS CEO Karen Lynch was the opening night speaker at Fortune's Most Powerful Women summit.
CVS CEO Karen Lynch was the opening night speaker at Fortune's Most Powerful Women summit.Stuart Isett for Fortune

Good morning.

“If we don’t have radical change in the health care system, we will falter and we will fail.”

Those aren’t the words of a radical activist. Instead, they were spoken by the woman who runs one of the largest players in the U.S. health care system—CVS Health. CEO Karen Lynch was the opening night speaker at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit last night, interviewed by editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. And though Lynch has reached the pinnacle of corporate power—no other woman has ever run a company as large as hers—her goal is anything but status quo. Since becoming CEO of a company that was already a mash up of drug stores and an insurance company, she has spent $8 billion to acquire home health care company Signify Health and $10.6 billion to acquire primary care provider Oak Street Health. An excerpt from her comments:

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“Our vision and our strategy is really about building connections in health care. We are driving at value-based care versus volume-based care. We’re driving at consumer connections and personal engagement by using technology so that people can be connected to their health care. And we are driving at community convenience, because health care isn’t just about going to the doctor, its about being in the community and having transportation to the doctor. It’s about being in the home and having access to healthy nutrition. So essentially, our strategy in a nutshell is connecting all the dots for someone on their health care journey. And so we will be in the community, we will be in the home, and we will be digitally connected.”

Also speaking at last night’s dinner was the newest member of the U.S. Senate—Laphonza Butler, who was named by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the seat left vacant by Dianne Feinstein’s death. Sen. Butler told how her 9-year-old daughter chose to miss her mother’s swearing in ceremony in order to go on a previously planned camping trip. 

“I said to her, ‘Mama’s got this thing going on.’ And as I usually do, I said, ‘Do you want to do this or do you want to go on your camping trip.’ And she said, ‘Oh no, Mama, I’m going camping.’ And I said, ‘Well, the vice president is going to be there.’ And she said, ‘Tell her I said hi.’”

I’ll report more from the MPW summit tomorrow. And while we are on the subject of powerful women, check out Maria Aspan’s Fortune piece on Under Armour CEO Stephanie Linnartz, who left the security of Marriott to take on a turn-around job. “I believe in taking calculated risks,” she told Aspan. 

Other news below.


Alan Murray
@alansmurray

alan.murray@fortune.com

TOP NEWS

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Judith McKenna, the former CEO of Walmart International, is urging companies to do more to support women employees. “You need the very best talent for every job. Full stop, end of story,” McKenna tells Fortune’s Phil Wahba. McKenna, long seen as a possible successor to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, stepped down last August—and tells Fortune she might be ready to do some teaching. Fortune

Another China real estate default

In a stock filing Tuesday, Country Garden said it missed a payment on a $60 million loan and warned it didn't expect to meet some of its future foreign debt payments, setting the giant Chinese developer up for its first-ever default. It also revealed that September sales are down 81% year-on-year. Debt woes from the one-time “model developer” earlier this year revived concerns about China’s now years-long real estate crisis. Fortune

Spaghetti code

Generative AI, the hottest thing in tech, may help companies deal with a problem that dates from 1959. Government agencies and many Wall Street firms rely on Cobol, an outdated programming language that few coders know how to use today. Now, companies like IBM hope that AI can convert Cobol into a newer programming language quickly and cheaply, saving companies the months they would have spent overhauling the “spaghetti code.” Fortune

AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

Companies like Delta Air Lines, Google, and AT&T are bringing on-site therapy to the office by Trey Williams 

The dark side of electric vehicles: Here are the countries where driving an EV can be dirtiest by Nicolas Rapp and Matthew Heimer 

How the pill smashed early marriage and boosted women’s rise up the corporate ladder — but still wasn’t enough to make women’s pay equal to men’s by Irina Ivanova

There’s a seismic shift in consumer behavior that’s forcing companies to speak out. Execs from Deloitte, Mattel, Meta, and Pinterest give advice on when and how by Alena Botros 

Nubank’s Vélez discusses FinTech’s rise in emerging markets and how Brazil is 5 years ahead of the U.S. by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez 

China’s disappointing Golden Week holiday—the first after the end of COVID-zero—shows the country’s consumers are still holding back by Lionel Lim

This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon. 

This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read insights from Fortune CEO Alan Murray. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.

About the Authors
Nicholas Gordon
By Nicholas GordonAsia Editor
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Nicholas Gordon is an Asia editor based in Hong Kong, where he helps to drive Fortune’s coverage of Asian business and economics news.

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