Price: $64.00 - $35.00 (as of Apr 03, 2025 11:29:45 UTC – Details)
6 reviews for Healthcare Investing: Profiting from the New World of Pharma, Biotech, and Health Care Services (McGraw-Hill Finance & Investing)
Kunal Patrawala –
Great book for understanding and investing in the current healthcare landscape
This book was extremely useful. We used this for a Healthcare investing class at Columbia and I think it provides a very thorough understanding of how the healthcare industry works and how an investor should allocate their capital.
Lauren Williams –
Eye opening to new investment opportunities
This book broke the ice on healthcare investing for me. The healthcare industry is a very intimidating market with so many facets and moving parts and under constant threat to change and reform. Many investors, like myself, stray away from healthcare investments because it is not worth the time it takes to understand all the risks. This book gave me a basis for understanding and identifying a good healthcare investment and made a great introduction to healthcare investing because it addresses the many areas of the market in understandable terms and aids to decrease the intimidating healthcare industry. The material in the book has been thoroughly researched and includes many references for continued education.This book opened my eyes to new investment opportunities and showed that in this industry, there is always room for improvement, profit and will benefit the greater good of society. There are also great arguments for why healthcare investing alone is a diversified area for investing with opportunities everywhere.The author does a great job at giving a historical overview of health care reform attempts and evaluating every aspect of the direction a reform is moving and the magnitude of impacts it will have on companies in the industry.I now better understand and appreciate the differences in the industry including the governmentâs role and in the interconnectedness of industry subsectors to be able to more successfully quantify a companyâs products, services, etc.The book further breaks down investment strategies for small and large pharmaceuticals including generic drug companies, biotechnology, health-care services and medical technology.I look forward to buying the authorâs next book.
Scott James –
Don’t expect to learn much from this book.
I am not a sophisticated investor, just your aveage guy who trys to learn more about managing his own investments, and I learned almost nothing from this book..This book is SO BASIC it would only be appropriate for, say, a college freshman who knows NOTHING about healthcare, investing, or the stock market. It was only in the last three or four chapters where the author really got in to anything specific about healtcare investments, and even then, it was very general. If you are that new to investing there are many other books that would better serve you.
Winston Kotzan –
High aspirations, but lack of direction
Healthcare is such a dynamic field with so much complexity and change that even a seasoned expert must constantly amass new knowledge. As a finance professional who previously worked as a healthcare sector analyst at a prominent Wall Street investment bank, I obtained this book with the goal of complementing my understanding and hopefully, finding some new investment ideas.Les Funtleyder takes on a rather daunting task: explain everything there is to know about investing in healthcare within a brief 259 pages. I have mixed feelings about his success in accomplishing this goal. While this book has plenty of merit, its good points are countered by some whopping downsides.The Strengths:Most healthcare literature is purely about political, administrative, or moral dilemmas, but few sources are purely directed at investment as this. I like the unique, business-minded approach this book takes. The front end of is loaded with facts and statistics relevant to this country’s health care crisis. Les does a fair job educating the reader on healthcare’s current systemic challenges, and outlines the big game played between the ill, providers of treatment, and the private and governmental insurers. Overall he does a terrific job presenting a great deal of topics in laymen’s terms, avoiding most of the technical jargon used in the field. Furthermore, this book is thoroughly researched with an excellent bibliography for further reading. A professional like myself would probably be compelled to look up a few of those sources.The Weaknesses:The biggest downside of this book is that it does not have the guts to name names – it does not mention specific companies! By failing to talk about specific players in the industry, a healthcare “investing” book, is somewhat self-defeating. I am not sure if this is due to legal reasons or to keep the book from getting dated too soon. Whatever the reason, this insufficiency reduces most of the book’s discussion to generalized conjecture of “what-if” scenarios in the market.With such breadth covered, this book also can’t do justice to every subtopic. Understanding specifics is the key to success in a game like healthcare investing, but the book fails in this regard. In many cases, the beneficiaries of certain movements are not clear because there are so few pure plays in healthcare. For example, the book gives a generalized rundown on the future of personalized medicine. One of the major players I know of in personalized medicine is Medco Health Solutions (not mentioned specifically in the book), but pharmagenomics comprises only a small slice of their business with a questionable bottom line impact.Finally, to whom is this writing directed? I could not tell if Les is targeting retail investors or investment professionals. It feels that his audience lies in some sort of limbo between the two categories. Not good.Conclusion: I only rate this book two stars because although I found it useful for plugging a few holes in my warehouse of knowledge, its shortcomings override its practical benefits.
Mariusz Skonieczny –
Must Read for Healthcare Investors
As President Obama is trying to reform health care, there is no better time to familiarize ourselves with investment opportunities in the health care sector. The uncertainty about the future of health care reform makes many investors stay away from this sector. But for the courageous ones, there is a tremendous opportunity to make money. In the end, demand for health care products and services keeps growing. The author does a great job describing to readers how the reform could create investment opportunities and in which subsector of the health care industry these opportunities exist. I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in investing in health care stocks.- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
Victor Recasens –
I was expecting this book to bring some insights in the valuation and specifics of healthcare investment, especially biotechs. I found it rather superficial and somewhat boring. I found very few useful advises and most of them obvious. I cannot recommend it.
Kunal Patrawala –
Great book for understanding and investing in the current healthcare landscape
This book was extremely useful. We used this for a Healthcare investing class at Columbia and I think it provides a very thorough understanding of how the healthcare industry works and how an investor should allocate their capital.
Lauren Williams –
Eye opening to new investment opportunities
This book broke the ice on healthcare investing for me. The healthcare industry is a very intimidating market with so many facets and moving parts and under constant threat to change and reform. Many investors, like myself, stray away from healthcare investments because it is not worth the time it takes to understand all the risks. This book gave me a basis for understanding and identifying a good healthcare investment and made a great introduction to healthcare investing because it addresses the many areas of the market in understandable terms and aids to decrease the intimidating healthcare industry. The material in the book has been thoroughly researched and includes many references for continued education.This book opened my eyes to new investment opportunities and showed that in this industry, there is always room for improvement, profit and will benefit the greater good of society. There are also great arguments for why healthcare investing alone is a diversified area for investing with opportunities everywhere.The author does a great job at giving a historical overview of health care reform attempts and evaluating every aspect of the direction a reform is moving and the magnitude of impacts it will have on companies in the industry.I now better understand and appreciate the differences in the industry including the governmentâs role and in the interconnectedness of industry subsectors to be able to more successfully quantify a companyâs products, services, etc.The book further breaks down investment strategies for small and large pharmaceuticals including generic drug companies, biotechnology, health-care services and medical technology.I look forward to buying the authorâs next book.
Scott James –
Don’t expect to learn much from this book.
I am not a sophisticated investor, just your aveage guy who trys to learn more about managing his own investments, and I learned almost nothing from this book..This book is SO BASIC it would only be appropriate for, say, a college freshman who knows NOTHING about healthcare, investing, or the stock market. It was only in the last three or four chapters where the author really got in to anything specific about healtcare investments, and even then, it was very general. If you are that new to investing there are many other books that would better serve you.
Winston Kotzan –
High aspirations, but lack of direction
Healthcare is such a dynamic field with so much complexity and change that even a seasoned expert must constantly amass new knowledge. As a finance professional who previously worked as a healthcare sector analyst at a prominent Wall Street investment bank, I obtained this book with the goal of complementing my understanding and hopefully, finding some new investment ideas.Les Funtleyder takes on a rather daunting task: explain everything there is to know about investing in healthcare within a brief 259 pages. I have mixed feelings about his success in accomplishing this goal. While this book has plenty of merit, its good points are countered by some whopping downsides.The Strengths:Most healthcare literature is purely about political, administrative, or moral dilemmas, but few sources are purely directed at investment as this. I like the unique, business-minded approach this book takes. The front end of is loaded with facts and statistics relevant to this country’s health care crisis. Les does a fair job educating the reader on healthcare’s current systemic challenges, and outlines the big game played between the ill, providers of treatment, and the private and governmental insurers. Overall he does a terrific job presenting a great deal of topics in laymen’s terms, avoiding most of the technical jargon used in the field. Furthermore, this book is thoroughly researched with an excellent bibliography for further reading. A professional like myself would probably be compelled to look up a few of those sources.The Weaknesses:The biggest downside of this book is that it does not have the guts to name names – it does not mention specific companies! By failing to talk about specific players in the industry, a healthcare “investing” book, is somewhat self-defeating. I am not sure if this is due to legal reasons or to keep the book from getting dated too soon. Whatever the reason, this insufficiency reduces most of the book’s discussion to generalized conjecture of “what-if” scenarios in the market.With such breadth covered, this book also can’t do justice to every subtopic. Understanding specifics is the key to success in a game like healthcare investing, but the book fails in this regard. In many cases, the beneficiaries of certain movements are not clear because there are so few pure plays in healthcare. For example, the book gives a generalized rundown on the future of personalized medicine. One of the major players I know of in personalized medicine is Medco Health Solutions (not mentioned specifically in the book), but pharmagenomics comprises only a small slice of their business with a questionable bottom line impact.Finally, to whom is this writing directed? I could not tell if Les is targeting retail investors or investment professionals. It feels that his audience lies in some sort of limbo between the two categories. Not good.Conclusion: I only rate this book two stars because although I found it useful for plugging a few holes in my warehouse of knowledge, its shortcomings override its practical benefits.
Mariusz Skonieczny –
Must Read for Healthcare Investors
As President Obama is trying to reform health care, there is no better time to familiarize ourselves with investment opportunities in the health care sector. The uncertainty about the future of health care reform makes many investors stay away from this sector. But for the courageous ones, there is a tremendous opportunity to make money. In the end, demand for health care products and services keeps growing. The author does a great job describing to readers how the reform could create investment opportunities and in which subsector of the health care industry these opportunities exist. I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in investing in health care stocks.- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
Victor Recasens –
I was expecting this book to bring some insights in the valuation and specifics of healthcare investment, especially biotechs. I found it rather superficial and somewhat boring. I found very few useful advises and most of them obvious. I cannot recommend it.