The readers of Modern Healthcare have voted Revolution Health chairman and America Online founder Steve Case this year’s most powerful man in healthcare. I guess controlling an 18-month-old web site built largely on acquisitions makes you pretty powerful these days.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure Case is a spirited entrepreneur and a man with a vision. And his RevolutionHealth.com health and wellness site is piling up the usage stats. But the most powerful man in healthcare? That’s a stretch. It’s a stretch even if you include Revolution’s investments in retail clinic provider RediClinic and online health insurance agent Extend Health. Frankly, I’d like to know which if any of these operations are actually making money. Memo to Steve: please email me a balance sheet and an income statement.
By the way, number two on this year’s list is Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google. Number three: Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. Both Google and Microsoft are trying to do something philosophically similar to Revolution, i.e., increase the role of technology and consumerism in healthcare.
You certainly can’t rule out these big boys. But there’s an awful a lot of hype here. Remind me again how Microsoft has fared over the years in content development, cable television, interactive TV, and its hostile bid for Yahoo! And how did the merger of AOL and Time Warner fare at the nexus of online, media and entertainment? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
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