Money-Driven Medicine

"The U.S. spends twice as much per person on healthcare as the average developed nation, fully one-sixth of our GDP - yet our outcomes, especially for chronic diseases, are very often worse.  What makes us different?"

This question is posed by Academy Award winning Alex Gibney in a new documentary film, Money-Driven Medicine, released in October. The answer?  The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that has chosen to turn medicine into a largely unregulated, for-profit business.

The film is available for viewing online at no cost, or via DVD that can be purchased for $24.95.  California Newsreel, which is distributing the film, is encouraging thousands to screen Money-Driven Medicine in homes, places of worship, and other venues as part of an effort to help the American public better understand what is driving the cost and quality of care.

The film largely stays away from specific policy proposals and offers no specific fixes.  Rather, it helps the viewer understand how medicine is currently practiced in the United States.

Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Health Care Improvement, provides the core perspective of the film:  “We get more care, but not better care.” Our fee-for-service system channels resources into the high-tech, high-cost “rescue care” patients need after they become critically ill, while it skimps on the preventive primary care which could keep them out of the hospital in the first place. As a consequence, emergency rooms overflow while family practitioners are becoming an endangered species.

Medical ethicist Larry Churchill doesn’t mince words: “The current medical care system is not designed to meet the health needs of the population. It is designed to protect the interests of insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms, and to a certain extent organized medicine. It is designed to turn a profit. It is designed to meet the needs of the people in power.”

Many provocative questions are posed by the film, including these:

*  Do you think we need more primary care physicians? Do you think if we paid more for preventive, primary care we would pay less for emergency, “rescue” care? Do you think Congress should put in place incentives which redirect health resources to primary care?

*  Do you think doctors and hospitals should be reimbursed based on their results (accountable care) rather than the number of procedures performed (fee-for-service)? Should they be rewarded for using well-tested, evidence-based treatments and penalized for sloppy patient record-keeping, botched procedures and hospital-generated maladies?

                                                                                                        As healthcare reform gathers momentum in Congress, the special interests that find the current system profitable are fiercely resisting any and all attempts to moderate costs and move toward a more health-based (rather than profit-driven) system.  As part of your efforts to educate your members of Congress, why not ask them to view this documentary?