Hypochondria: What's Behind the Hidden Costs of Healthcare in America

A hypochondriac CEO shares his journey through the broken American healthcare system, analyzing its costliness and proposing a solution.

New York Times–bestselling author Hal Rosenbluth is the maverick executive behind Take Care Health Systems, the former president of Walgreens Health and Wellness and the now chairman and CEO of New Ocean Health Solutions. He is also a hypochondriac who amassed 227 medical claims in just two years.

In Hypochondria: What’s Behind the Hidden Costs of Healthcare in America, Rosenbluth and co-author Marnie Hall venture through Rosenbluth’s 227 claims. They take a brutally honest, but humorous journey from the evolution of Rosenbluth’s global management firm to his onset of Type 2 Diabetes, a tale woven with sleeping meds, nocturnal PB&J sandwiches, and anti-anxiety drugs; to founding a company with the youngest Johnson & Johnson president and his most recent entry to digital healthcare.

Hypochondria is not just a memoir. Along the way, the authors address the broader impact that each stakeholder—health plans, providers, health systems, and big pharma—have on the nation’s overstressed healthcare system. The book also offers a well-rounded guide to the traditional and not-so-typical solutions that can help people manage illness anxiety.

Entertaining and enlightening, Hypochondria opens a new dialogue about how the U.S. can get better at managing health and arresting costs of care, which includes promoting greater discussion amongst patients, families, providers, employers, and healthcare executives. This book should serve as a beacon for change, unraveling the commercialization of healthcare, dissecting Big Pharma’s role in America’s pill-popping culture, and proposing alternative, disruptive solutions.