The US healthcare system has to be overhauled to put the patient's needs above the doctors and the insurers. Because they're not using health care now. And it wasn't because procedures were more expensive in Miami than in Minneapolis. Well, you have a stent in your heart, right? If it's a radiologist, they get paid for each CT scan they deliver. WEIL: Most of this huge effort of the healthcare industry is devoted to intervention in established disease and the majority of that disease is lifestyle related and preventable. CHO: Oh, my God. UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: There we go. We know it's there. And it's treated with things like angioplasty and stems and bypass surgery, and yet what does he have (INAUDIBLE)? We do nothing about supporting the good, that the body can and wants to be healthy. These lifestyle changes cannot only work as well as drugs and surgery, but often even better at a fraction of the cost and the only side effects are good ones. I just had been ignoring it, because I thought, you know, I'm only 34 years old. DR. ROBY COSGROVE, CEO, CLEVELAND CLINIC: I've never looked after a healthy person. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need to get up and pee? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I did yesterday. The costs are going through the roof and the ability to help these service members and their families recover and repair and come back to a functional life is getting less and less. And abolitionists more broadly encouraged northerners to refuse to comply with the enforcement of fugitive slave laws and to disobey the Supreme Court's ignoble Dred Scott v. If you have that desire to quit smoking, we'll get there eventually. So, a hospital like the one you just saw there. Aladdin (2019)/Transcript. What the insurance industry's objective is, is to try to weaken those consumer protections over time and to try to influence how the law is being implemented. Host virtual events and webinars to increase engagement and generate leads. Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare is a 2012 feature-length documentary directed by Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke and released by Roadside Attractions. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, I need some help over here. Next, click the three-dot menu icon underneath the title of the video. There has to be a different way of doing things. I haven't touched my toes in months. We're saying that the system has created incentives in subtle and not so subtle ways drives more procedures. We're the only providers for. Up next, CNN Films presents "ESCAPE FIRE: THE FIGHT TO RESCUE AMERICAN HEALTHCARE." MARTIN: A day? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, that had to be something to do with my diabetes. Aliens in the Attic/Transcript. I say, radical? And so behavior becomes a form of currency for people to accomplish their lifestyle changes. So, I went into the hospital and they told me I had had a heart attack. Until my doctor said to me, I don't know what else to do for you. MARTIN: I bill $213, let's say for a 45 minute face to face visit with a patient. Special tubing with an attached deflated balloon is threaded up to the corner of your arteries. When you go over into a war zone where you see your buddies die or you get injured, that's going to tax anybody. Our approach here is completely holistic. ROSS: What do you think about that? DR. ANDREW WEIL, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA: All I hear is how we're going to give more people access to the present system and how we're going to pay for it. JONAS: There's very large randomized trials done at multiple centers that have demonstrated that acupuncture works, so we put together a study to see if we can actually insert this simple acupuncture technique during the aerovacs of wounded soldiers into Walter Reed and other medical centers in the United States. MARTIN: How are you today? Get educated on these issues and add your voice to a growing chorus for change. You're two or three times as likely to get a heart catheterization or have a stent in your coronaries. It's your money. I'm really, really pleased. MARTIN: I think what the American people need is, they need good health care. How to know if you are being prescribed unnecessary medications or procedures, that's next. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These are the costs of all of our drugs in order. You have all these stents, and these stents, once they go in, they never come out and are part of you. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You realize one day, wow, I haven't worked out. GUPTA: So, tell me how that would work? We don't have a healthcare system in this country. Afghanistan? RICHARD UMBDENSTOCK, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION: I was almost as surprised as anybody to see the reports that I was the most frequent visitor to the White House during the health reform debate. It's much better to try to work at a deeper level. It expands the artery to hold it open and allow the blood to flow. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Without the financial incentives, there's no way I could have gotten to the point that I am now, at saving literally thousands of dollars over the past few years by being healthier. And if you try and buck the system, someone says, what can we do to get your productivity up? UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Safeway's healthcare costs have remained flat compared to a 40 percent jump for most other companies. Aladdin and the King of Thieves/Transcript. I can't tell you how shocked we were when we saw her the first time, because here was a young woman whose diabetes was not well controlled. It's the same challenge. It doesn't matter how complicated they are, how much time that we spend on them, it's just a number, one, two, three, four, five. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At the executive level, what's most important is hitting Wall Street's expectations, and they have to. Jonathan, you know, we want better care and lower costs. He told Dean, how long is the program? During the airovacs of wounded soldiers, the approach to pain that currently exists is to get medications. The check that I get back from the insurance company after that was billed is $40. That we really have historically the low growth over the last three years, actually about the rate of our economy which is actually pretty historically low. A stapler, this stapler that is often to used in surgery, like this? Not very much, but a little. So I decided to leave. I was popping 20 or 30 Nitrols a day. We're really mortgaging the future. We have to teach young physicians that prevention comes first. To feel that way when you come home is demoralizing. Exhale. You will learn if your health care costs are going to go down any time soon. We're talking about a $3 or $4 billion a year drug. There's nothing else I can do. So that's rewarding for me. Eight IEDs through this deployment. WEIL: In the 1950s, Americans took pharmaceutical medication at about 10 percent of the rate that they do now. Even if I lose 30 more pounds, which probably is my ultimate target, I'm not going to stop doing this. MARTIN: At a community healthcare center like where I work, you see chronic illness, people that aren't able to afford their medications, lots of psychiatric illnesses. But this program has just inspired me to press forward. NIEMTZOW: Any pain? MARSHALL: So, anybody that's having a heart attack should get a stent. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd be chomping narcotics. That's my routine. The documents are coming out in these court suits, it looks worse and worse. Dr. Berwick suggests that the current state of healthcare. GUPTA: I think the numbers are surprising to a lot of people, even people who work in hospital. The way that the system is set up, you can't be effective. And some people even that are getting stents don't have symptoms. What we do with waste in healthcare. Heart cath, get another stent. If you talk to the employees around here that have lost 35, 50, 60, 100 pounds, they will tell you without a doubt they have a better quality of life. Just do something. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, I'm only 34 years old. It's a happy time in my life right now. Six years ago before I became CEO, I stopped to think, I've never looked after a healthy person and maybe it would be easier to take care of people and keep them from getting sick before they actually did get sick. Thanks all of you for joining us. And that's parts of what a really great healthcare system would do. They either couldn't afford it, or they worked for small employers that had been purged by big insurance companies. BROWNLEE: We spend a spectacular amount of money on healthcare. (END VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA: And Yvonne I the patient in that video. You can't have a cafeteria that doesn't have calorie counts on it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do we want? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. American healthcare costs are rising so rapidly that they could reach $4.2 trillion annually, roughly 20% of our gross domestic product, within ten years. Takes about 15 minutes for you. GlaxoSmithKline worked very hard to keep these numbers from the public. They may keep the disease process going and they may strengthen it over time. NISSEN: There's litigation involved and the company set aside $6 million to settle lawsuits. They become more productive. We just have to keep working towards that. MARTIN: OK, OK. You lost five pounds. First Published 08/18/22 12:02. read transcript. From a patient perspective, from a physician perspective, you want to make sure obviously, that people are being educated correctly. CHO: I know, you look really good. BERWICK: It's so frustrating to know how high the risks are and how easy the answers are. Escape Fire: The Fight To Save American Health Care. The fire broke out around 10 p.m. Monday at the Cozumel Apartments in the 6400 block of Sierra Blanca Drive near Westpark Tollway and Highway 6. This -- medications I was on. If you look at a hospital bill, you might see an IV bag charge. I want to show you how it works. I decided out of curiosity to go check this out. YATES: I meditate, and it has opened up a whole new world for me. So, less than 30 percent are actually done in these people with stable ischemic heart disease. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We all know there's things we can do and they make us feel good and we like to do them, but we're going to feel really bad if our doors close. If you're in the system, do you access of if you are insured, if you are living in a safe neighborhood, your outcomes are great in America. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta. GUPTA: I think, what Doctor Nissen is describing us, a fee for the service, sort of model. Look at our results, our life span isn't even in the top 20. We need primary care doctors. OK? There are answers, we know what safe care looks like. $300 billion on drugs. The patient just fell off the litter. An estimated 600,000 stent procedures are performed every year in the United States. A lot of that comes you spoke - we spoke about are driven by people who don't have access to the system. It caused their blockages to become less blocked in their arteries. YATES: I'm a red neck south Louisiana boy, just old Hill Billy, you know? Come back in a month or so? MARTIN: When was your last mammogram and pap smear? BROWNLEE: The vast majority of doctors in this country are paid by a fee-for-service system. Half. GUPTA: The children dying before the age of five exceeds any of the other 16 richest countries. . Korengal, the (INAUDIBLE), it's the most intense battleground that you can ever be in. This is major reason why we see kids getting fat in this country. ORNISH: I thought, most things in biology go both ways, so if bad things make your telomere shorter, maybe good things will make them longer. This is a lot worse. With the infantry division. Right? Obesity leads to heart disease and strokes and diabetes. Simply the same way the hospitals and physicians. Impressive for it to react that quickly. All right. And I hope our new generation of health professionals will catalyze this social movement that's necessary and enough people get aroused enough about the situation and see it for what it is and then start some kind of grassroots movement to change the political balance of power. We can't prevent disease in everybody, but we have to try. They couldn't get insurance. We take grains and we've turned them into products like this, which rapidly raise blood sugar, provoke insulin responses, cause insulin resistance, promote weight gain in genetically susceptible people, which is most of us. (END VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA: Dr. Erin Martin, that's a primary care doctor you just saw in the film. OK. Bend down. WGRZ reported that crews encountered heavy fire and thick smoke coming from the building at 747 Main St., after they got the call at 10:08 a.m. A Mayday was called early in the operation. Official Trailer Watch the full 1.5 hour version on Netflix or YouTube ($3.99). If you get a bump on your head as a friend of mine had, and you go into the emergency department, in America, you get a cat scan. Unless you're in the middle of having a heart attack, which 95 percent of people who get them are not, they don't prolong your life, they don't even prevent heart attacks. And so, one of the good news, the exciting news is, is that there's a lot of energy now to turn that around. Fifteen years later, you can't walk into your average hospital today and get acupuncture after an operation. It is important to keep in mind. Do you think that will make a difference? And the problem is, some of those procedures will lead to bad outcomes. Healthcare reform was a good place to start, but it will do little to address the root problems. We need a whole new kind of medicine. People come in and you try to fix one thing and they come back for the same thing over and over and over. NISSEN: Good morning. Look at the thinness. And maybe it would be easier to take care of people and keep them from getting sick before they actually did get sick. Event marketing. This is incentives the system so that patient have a less specifically to be of picking the right choice. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So uncomfortable and I need to pee again. We're dealing with the health of the nation. If someone has compression of one of their lungs, they might need a chest tube like this, $1100. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are all one person's? We're fighting everything for that not to happen, but it's because there isn't the funding going into primary care. Does it make a difference? I mean, look at our results. MARTIN: What I do every day, buddy. So Lexapro is the only thing you're on right now? It's too much paying for it. MARTIN: Because of the bottom line, because of the cuts that are coming through the government, if it came to the point where they couldn't pay me anymore, that would suck, but I'm not afraid. CINDY ROBERTSON, ADMINISTRATOR, MD-COLOMBIA FAMILY HEALTH CENTER: We're the only clinic in this community county, so it's about 20,000 people overall. She's still taking her Lexapro, but it's obviously not doing the job. (END VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA: In fact to build on that, if you talk to some of the executives of these hospitals, they will say for every dollar that is actually billed they may collect just pennies. Got to push through it. That was job number one for them. MARTIN: It was a dire situation and there are many times that myself and my colleagues would have the conversation of, you know, we are going to miss something, this could be really bad, and actually having the fear that this was going to be harmful to our patients at some point. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. (LAUGHTER) That's the way I like to look at it. When you're in the inner circle of the health insurance company, what's most important is meeting Wall Street's expectations. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I lost about 120 pounds over the course of three years. BERWICK: The healthcare system isn't affordable anymore. You're doing this radical intervention, you know, I say radical? that is going to raise cause. I'd rather be shot again than go through withdrawals of coming off that medicine. Still bothers me to this day. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. People eat what's cheap and what's available. Jonas, Wayne B., commentator. But so what, right? Escape Fire. What's wrong with medical education is that it simply doesn't address whole subject areas that are absolutely essential to understanding human beings, health, illness, and treatment. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eggs, sausage, grits, bacon. But, that's not the whole story. Compared to having your chest cut open? And if they have a relationship with you, feeling truncated. Yvonne came to se me when she was sort of at her wit's end. I could hardly just about walk three steps and I'd have to stop and rest. I mean, the impression I think was a little misleading there, don't you think Nissen? BROWNLEE: We have a disease care system, and we have a very profitable disease care system. Okay. We spend one heck of a lot of money. Transcripts; License . NIEMTZOW: Oh, you would? MARTIN: OK? She had bypass surgery in her 30, 27 cardiac cauterization and well over seven stents before she went to the Cleveland clinic for treatment. That also happened in the 1990s. If you have cholesterol under control, a discount. It was important to keep expressing the hospital's position. So, you want to take a look at that and find out what it is. You know, Nancy, we talked a lot about these bills. It was a passion for healing. You almost forget that what you're doing is providing healthcare. If somebody has hypertension, we give anti-hypertension drugs. PROTESTERS: Healthcare. Co-directed by Matthew Heineman and Academy Award-nominee Susan Froemke (Lalee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton), Escape Fire looks at a U.S. healthcare system designed to profit on disease not. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not in there? The small wire cage you see there is the actual step. There's saving money and there's cost effective. And doctors wanting to please their patients will often prescribe it. Just sheer numbers, $2.7 trillion per year. And the fire spread around him. About 70 percent of all angioplasty and stent procedures in this country are done in people actively having heart attacks, large heart attacks or smaller heart attacks or having what we call unstable angina. We have made all of this unhealthy food the cheapest and most available food. They can pretty much get away with increasing the rates as much as they want to. So, if there's a concern someone has a tumor, they who use a needle like this. Let me just take a listen to you. I started having really, really bad chest pain. WEIL: In the year of for-profit medicine, the time allowed for patient visits has shrunk to a point where you've got seven minutes with a patient. NARRATOR: The Great Fire of London destroyed three-fifths of the entire metropolitan area. So in 1994, I started a fellowship for people who had completed medical school to retrain physicians. DR. TIERAONA LOW DOG, FELLOWSHIP DIRECTOR, ARIZONA CENTER FOR INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE: We want to expose clinicians to a broader way of seeing the patient a deeper understanding of healing and a larger toolbox from which to choose for therapies. You can empower people to change their lifestyle and if we can make it really reversible, that really brings it into the mainstream. 0. Aladdin (1992)/Transcript. JONATHAN GRUBER, ECONOMIST, MIT: Prevention, unfortunately, does actually saves us money, you know. When I had my first heart attack, did the cardiac catheterization, put the thing up there and put a stent in my heart, because I had a clogged artery. The answers among us, and only by accepting the fact that the American healthcare system is badly broken and the status quo isn't working, is bankrupting our nation, will we be able to seek out the escape fires, the potential solutions, and create a sustainable and patient centered system for the future. 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