McHenry County College will host a
screening of a documentary and a panel discussion on the status of the health
care system in the country. “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American
Healthcare” will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9 in the Luecht
Conference Center at the college, located at 8900 U.S. Hwy. 14 in Crystal Lake.
The film focuses on how the health
care system provides “quick fixes” rather than prevention of diseases. Award-winning
filmmakers Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke follow dramatic human stories as
well as leaders fighting to transform healthcare at the highest levels of
medicine, industry, government, and the U.S. military.
According to a summary of the film’s
website, the film examines how the current battle over cost and access does not
address the root of the problem—that the healthcare system consists of
“profit-driven care rather than patient-driven care.” The summary also states
that Americans spend $300 billion a year on pharmaceutical drugs—almost as much
as the rest of the world combined—and our outcomes are worse compared to other
parts of the world.
“We wanted to show that we can empower
ourselves to be healthier, as individuals and as a country, even before we get
sick,” directors Heineman and Froemke said in an interview.
The title of the film came from a
speech and healthcare manifesto by Dr. Don Berwick years before he took office
as the head of Medicare and Medicaid. Dr. Berwick applies the “escape fire”
analogy to healthcare, exploring how our system is burning while there are
solutions right in front of us. Dr. Berwick draws a parallel between the
healthcare system and a forest fire that ignited in Mann Gulch, Montana in
1949.
Berwick said “….Healthcare, it’s in
really bad trouble. The answer is among us. Can we please stop and think and
make sense of the situation and get our way out of it?”
The event is free and open to the
public. For information, contact (815) 455-8581. To view the film’s trailer,
visit www.escapefiremovie.com/trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment