Cured! The Insider’s Handbook for Health Care Reform

Stephen S. S. Hyde

Hardcover copy from inside flap

Cured! The Insider’s Handbook for Health Care Reform is an insightful exploration of how a fundamental market failure, compounded by nearly seventy years of misguided government and corporate efforts, has caused virtually all of the major problems we see in today’s dysfunctional American health care system. Veteran health care insider Stephen Hyde further illuminates how nearly all of the proposed solutions from both sides of the political aisle will worsen these problems. Only a critical combination of government insurance reform, tax reform, and safety-net reform will create the boundary conditions necessary to enable proven market forces to cure the problems of ever-rising costs, an epidemic of preventable diseases, coin-toss medical quality, primary care doctor shortages, and a lack of insurance availability, affordability, and portability that denies needed coverage to tens of millions of Americans.

            This book articulately challenges a long list of commonly accepted beliefs that have prevented a rational solution. Its expert analysis shows how market failure led to our deeply flawed employer-based health insurance system and how it and a plethora of ad hoc government programs have created an unstable and unsustainable health care system. Only fundamental root-and-branch reform will correct it.

Most importantly, Stephen Hyde presents a powerful argument that the same market dynamics providing us with high-quality and affordable food, clothing, housing, transportation, and recreation can be harnessed to do the same thing for medical care. Hyde’s detailed, workable, and comprehensive solution, the American Choice Health Plan, represents a uniquely American vision that can become a model for the world by providing high-quality, affordable health care for everyone.