Over the next few days I will post three essays about different aspects of health care in the United States. The debate over reforming our system is one of the most important national discussions of our time. The results of this debate impact the future not only of our physical health but of the financial and moral health of our nation, and, “we the people.”
If the health care system in the United States were a person with an illness it would be waiting in the emergency room at the hospital in a state of panic not knowing just how sick it really is.
I ask you to take some time over the next few days and ponder the state of health care in the U.S. Click on the links you will find embedded in the essays. Watch the videos. Read the articles. Our health–YOUR health–depends on being informed about the challenges we face and participating in finding solutions.
We’re now treating medicine as if it were an industrial product. This is a system which is fundamentally broken in terms of the kind of conflicts it raises in the minds of physicians and also in the minds of patients.
–Dr. Larry Churchill, PhD, Vanderbilt University
I was born when Eisenhower was President. He warned the nation of the dangers inherent in the growth of the Military Industrial Complex–a profit-driven military. What we have today in the United States is a Medical Industrial Complex.
The patient isn’t the center of a collaboration. The patient is the victim of a competition.
–Maggie Mahar, author, Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much
Bill Moyers provides a sobering look at “Money-Driven Medicine.” This is a powerful introduction to some of the significant challenges we face in fixing what it broken in health care in America. Watch his report from August 28 here.