About Stephen Hyde
Welcome. I’m Steve Hyde and I’ve been toiling in the fields of health care for many years. I’ve studied it, advised or regulated many of its institutions (and run some of them), and written a couple of pretty good books on coping with and fixing it—or so I’m told.
The purpose of hydeonhealthcare.com is to clear up some popular misconceptions about how our health care system really works (and why it doesn’t) and how we can fix it. I will admit up front to one major bias. I have an abiding belief that most Americans make mostly rational decisions often enough to allow democracy and market capitalism to be the most successful institutions ever devised for organizing societies and economies. I know, both are incredibly messy, and where the two come together is even messier—especially lately. But buried within them, I believe, are the secrets for getting a health care system that delivers affordable, high-quality health care for all Americans. Please join me in my excavations.
My latest book is Cured! The Insider’s Handbook for Health Care Reform (June 2009, HobNob Publishing). If you want to know a lot more about how our health care system works, why it doesn’t, and how we can fix it with a regulated market solution, I hope you’ll read it. I also wrote Prescription Drugs for Half Price or Less (2006, Bantam-Dell Division of Random House). If you take prescription drugs, it can probably save you a lot of money.
My qualifications for talking about health care and how to reform it include having survived the last great American health care revolution. No, not Hillary Care. That was a bust. I’m talking about the HMO/Managed Care movement that was—long ago—supposed to cure America’s unsustainable problems of high-cost health care, mediocre quality, and too few primary care physicians. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
I started my career in HMO consulting after getting an MBA from Harvard Business School. That led to my joining both the Ford and Carter administrations as the federal government’s chief HMO financial regulator back when the feds were pumping a lot of money into the industry. I later left the government to start and lead one of the earliest and most successful HMO companies, Peak Health Care. I also became certified as a managed care actuary. After selling Peak Health, I went on to form a series of start-up companies, mostly in health care.
Over the years I’ve been CEO of a two medical groups and board member and/or CEO of more than a few companies and nonprofits, including a hospital, a disease management company, two health management consultancies, a physician practice management firm, an adoption agency, a PPO company, and a health insurance company. For the past several years, I’ve been advising corporate and insurance company clients on how to improve their prescription drug benefits by getting their employees to ask their doctors about the best drugs for the least amount of money. I’m also spending a lot of time traveling the country to speak about market-based health reform.
