4:00 Minute Teaser Video UPDATE: "In 2010, the US spent $2.5 trillion on healthcare." But now (in 2018) we are spending $3.65 trillion/year. PROTESTERS: Healthcare. An estimated 600,000 stent procedures are performed every year in the United States. And every year they have to turn people away. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It wears on your lower back wearing, you know, a 40-pound vest. 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. And the company did nothing. They didn't want to have a new competitor. Putting patients first. And here's the secret, healthier people cost less money too. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They don't say how much they gave him. I think a large part of it is personal issues, where we have different behaviors that I think increase our burden of disease. Entitled Escape Fire, Dr. Berwick's speech took its audience back to the year 1949, when a wildfire broke out on a Montana hillside, taking the lives of 13 young men and changing the way firefighting was managed in the United States. I think that's an important point. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like I'm warming up a little bit. Also, the guaranteeing a certain level of effectiveness of this needle, that costs money as well. 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. These perverse incentives that you described? And so, one of the good news, the exciting news is, is that there's a lot of energy now to turn that around. Now we're kind of dealing with the consequences. DR. SANJAY GUPTA, HOST: Good evening. I never had a personal doctor, family doctor, nothing, all my life. And I think that's a good place to start. ORNISH: The limitations of high-tech medicine have never been clearer. There's nothing else I can do. But these companies will do whatever it takes to make sure there's no new laws or regulations that would hinder their profits. But I think the economic imperatives are much stronger now. Again, you were part of the documentary. In the United States, it was around $8,000 annually. It's about saving the health of a nation. He's taken 10 tablets. He told Dean, how long is the program? That's not good medicine. OK? SGT. Stay tuned because afterwards, we're going to have a very important discussion regarding what we can all do to live longer and healthier lives and maybe avoid unnecessary costs and procedures. And my doctor told him he wouldn't recommend taking me because he didn't think I would live the year. ROSS: When do you think it would be good to try it? 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. I became a doctor because I care about patients and working here, I can't help them. (LAUGHTER) Infinitely. He is also a president of the society for interventional and geography in intervention. But I think, to be honest, when you add more people to the system; that raises costs. There's the cost of covering people who simply don't have insurance or can't pay. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need to get up and pee? This is major reason why we see kids getting fat in this country. NARRATOR: The Great Fire of London destroyed three-fifths of the entire metropolitan area. And Doctor Nissen is in salaried as well. ROSS: OK, what was it, Mr. Linton, that finally made you say, okay, that's it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. That's how embedded people get in the status quo. It is the largest health insurance company in the country. WENDELL POTTER, FORMER HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS, CIGNA: Insurance companies have always been able to regulate the rates they charge. MARTIN: Wow. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Haven't gotten near my toes in months unless I do this. If we just change reimbursement, it's a game changer, we change medical practice and we change medical education. It includes the mandate, the requirement that we all have to buy their coverage. GUPTA: Are you optimistic about the future when it am could to family care, and when it comes to our health care overall? With the infantry division. If I burn the fuel around me, then when the fire comes and it takes me, I'm safe. It was -- with a huge amount of skepticism and resistance. 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. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where are you coming from? 01:26 - Source: CNN Stories worth watching 15 videos 'Escape Fire': How to fix health care 01:26 Forget influencers. And interestingly, patients really respond to that. Escape Fire. It was either come and get care there or not get care at all. DR. LESLIE CHO, CARDIOLOGIST, CLEVELAND CLINIC: You know how people say it takes a village to raise a child? I've spent more than 30 years of doing studies showing that heart disease can be reversed by changing what we eat, how we respond to stress, how much we exercise, and how much love and support we have in our lives. I had no knowledge of ways to prevent heart attack or stroke or cancer or things like that. But we end up being this revolving door. NIEMTZOW: If you didn't have the acupuncture needles, how do you think you'd be feeling? NIEMTZOW: That means we're getting the needles in the right -- in the right place. WARD: For a long period of time I was hiding. Simply the same way the hospitals and physicians. We're dealing with the health of the nation. But something maybe you didn't know, when you look at a hospital bill, it's not just the cost of the supplies. Little did I know that it was followed by years of the same thing over and over and over again. Description: In this clip* from the award-winning documentary, Escape Fire: A Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, you will hear about two patients trying to navigate the US health care system. OSBORNE: I am great. What do you say when someone calls you? The check that I get back from the insurance company after that was billed is $40. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right. The fire overtook the crew, killing 13 men and burning 3,200 acres. And if you try and buck the system, someone says, what can we do to get your productivity up? One of the great contributions of America to world cuisine, you know, fake bread. SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MINORITY LEADER: Safeway Corporation, they've actually been able to bend the cost curve. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not, not when I'm doing that. The answer is among us. How to know if you are being prescribed unnecessary medications or procedures, that's next. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god. I smoked six cigars a day, 10 cups of coffee, a lot of wine. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. The army sergeant general directed that we establish the pain management task force to take a look at alternatives to narcotics. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I was a kid. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWNLEE: The history of how the American healthcare system grew is not one of order, it's one of sort of happen hazard chaos. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you have any pain right now? It's a completely irrational system. ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare tackles one of the most pressing issues of our time: how can we save our badly broken healthcare system? BROWNLEE: Fee for service rewards physicians for doing more. Not having to eat all these pills. DR. PETER CARROLL, CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF UROLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO: My path crossed with Dean's because we both wanted to bring rigorous clinical trial testing to this hypothesis that lifestyle intervention could have a impact on men with early stage prostate cancer. Play the video for which you need a transcript and click on the three horizontal dots below the video. Rescue care is second to none. This is a lot worse. At some point he's going to stop breathing if he's taken too much narcotics. The easiest starting point was in the 30,000 non-union workforce, and I believe that within four years all of our employees will get this kind of healthcare plan. We even found that when you change your lifestyle, over 500 genes were changed. It was a passion for healing. I had difficulty sleeping at night. GUPTA: In the spirit of educating people out there, I think I have cardiac disease in my family. As an overall system, no, we're not anywhere near at the best in the world. And you know, our grandparents did not eat stuff like this. He's like really not listening very well. A documentary highlighting the shortcomings of the American healthcare system. Everybody agrees on that. I'm not changed, but I'm changing. And so, I think it points to the violence in our society. Escape Fire: The Fight To Save American Health Care Aired March 10, 2013 - 20:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. All right? It was important to keep expressing the hospital's position. We have to be mindful to those points in time where you can intervene and say enough's enough. It will require a huge effort. And is it still traveling into your neck? (COMMERCIAL BREAK) SHANNON BROWNLEE, MEDICAL JOURNALIST: Dark matter is a discovery by astronomers that there is a huge amount of the universe that we can't see. And if they have a relationship with you, feeling truncated. Got approved very quickly. MARSHALL: Yes, sir. Credit: Battlestate Games. As a society, we have to make it easier and more affordable for people to make better lifestyle choices than worse ones. Fire Escape. It's the same challenge. If you have that happen in Germany or England, they say, here's a list of instructions, if you have problems come back and see us. MARTIN: I think what the American people need is, they need good health care. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. If you account for that, we do much better. Committed to her living longer and better. And, you know, you kind of get busy. NISSEN: We're not saying that people are doing these procedures for profit. WARD: I was chronically coming down with colds, and I knew that there was a history of cancer in my family, diabetes, heart disease. Dodge survived, nearly unharmed. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I quit drinking, too. I ultimately had a crisis of conscience, because I was not at all proud of what I was doing. And that was the first study showing that heart disease was reversible. OSBORN: Oh, it's so beautiful! In the dialog that appears, select the language of the file you're uploading. Link 'n' Share. So, I went into the hospital and they told me I had had a heart attack. Aladdin and the King of Thieves/Transcript. CARROLL: We found that the men who underwent lifestyle intervention, their PSA rates generally went down and they were less likely to require treatment. It's OK. You're good, you're good. NISSEN: Good morning. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do it again on Friday. So in 1994, I started a fellowship for people who had completed medical school to retrain physicians. TUCKSON: Primary care doctors are being cared more. She had had bypass surgery at an early age. You're two or three times as likely to get a heart catheterization or have a stent in your coronaries. The brain is not particularly good at distinguishing thirst and hunger, so we often eat when we should be drinking, things like water. When they have insurance and they have access to usual source of care, primary care. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. ERIN MARTIN, PRIMARY CARE: As a primary care physician, we are supposed to be the people that are making sure the patients don't get sick and they have everything they need to maintain health. Yvonne Osborn began suffering from severe chest pain at the age of 34. I felt like there's got to be something different, something better. NISSEN: Yes. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We'll do it at the front. Mountains of Afghanistan are not easy to climb, so pain in my back. ROBIN ROBERTS, ABC NEWS: Now to a new study that shows diet may be a key tool in the fight against cancer. What we do with waste in healthcare. Firefighters said they received about 12 calls . I decided out of curiosity to go check this out. It's addictive. Our healthcare premium starts here, and if you have a body mass index less than 30, you get a discount. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, that's why you don't want him to fall again. We need a whole new kind of medicine. 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. We tend to just see the light of healthcare, we see the goodness of health care, the potential for helping. I was 35 at the time and was scheduled for open-heart surgery. Just do something. I'm not sure what is what. Format your transcript file. CARNES: Notice where you are in the room, the people around. Now, thanks to both of you for joining us. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not in there? MARTIN: Thyroid is a little bit big. For me to spend 45 minutes on an established visit with a patient to make sure they are doing their exercise, make sure their diabetes is going okay, and to try to figure out what their true problem is, probably get paid $15. People with chronic disease who come in and out of hospitals, bouncing in and out of ERs, that's what they need, someone to really take an interest. That requires so much work, but we do it because we're committed to having her stay out of the hospital. The New Zealand and the United States, only two countries in the world where you can advertise prescription drugs. It goes into the other areas, and it's just not sustainable. Well, you have a stent in your heart, right? I want to give to people and I want to help people, and I wasn't able to find that here. ROSS: I just want to review this pain. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. YATES: That's every single signature that says that you're good to go to get out of Walter Reed and move on with my travel right there. I'm sorry, it's going to get pretty tight. He's got Lunesta and also has Valium. There were even times, honestly, that I looked in the mirror and said, how did you get here? And what I saw actually made me physically ill. As I looked at trial after trial, there were more heart attacks in the Avandia group. And there's a lot of talk about who's going to pay for it, and that's really important. If you have cholesterol under control, a discount. In fact, more soldiers died last year from non-combat injuries than during war. And by the way, they are number in the world and life expectancy. So inhale. They are often poor patients, but not always. YATES: The pain, it's hard, you know, it's really hard. There's a contradiction to what we do. And then clearly we have social and economic issues that impact people's ability to access if you look at our percentage of un-insurers. YATES: That's a healing process because you're not bottling up, it's going to a different section in your mind to where you can start processing it. I mean, I can't think of a single negative in doing this. . MARSHALL: You and I both know, it's hard to change the habits of a lifestyle. Who should get a stent? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Came off the mountain with only eight? You can export to TXT, DOCX, PDF, HTML, and many . UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eggs, sausage, grits, bacon. That is how many medications I was on. Where does that money come from? And not just a little bit here, a lot of money, we're talking $5 billion, I think last year from United Health. It turns out lots and lots of men who had a cancer that didn't need to be treated, but they got treated anyway and it was causing a lot of harm. CARNES: I will be at your side should anything challenging come up for you. ORNISH: We found that after a year, the men who made these intensive lifestyle changes, their physical heart disease improved. GRUBER: For everybody. If they are surgeons, they get paid for each procedure. We could do 1,000 studies with a million patients, it would remain on the fringes, it's all about the Benjamins, as (INAUDIBLE) would say. the play Tom is seen standing in a fire escape during many acts. But, one of the arguments seems to be, you add more people to the system, you get a lot more people insured. Your arteries around the heart. But we're going to talk to them about it still, you know? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bye. Going to go look for it. GUPTA: But, why are these causing hospitals so expensive? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got my blood sugar under control. Obesity leads to heart disease and strokes and diabetes. UMBDENSTOCK: We don't have enough primary care clinicians to provide that important fundamental level of care. What we don't know, is that a fundamental change? I think five or six of them are on the waiting list. Trying to get Medicare to cover a heart disease program has been by far the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. They may keep the disease process going and they may strengthen it over time. Insurance companies have always been able to regulate the rates they charge. Hold my beer while I shoot this gator, you know? We see a lot of the chronic conditions that affect many Americans that have gone untreated for sometimes months, but sometimes years. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So uncomfortable and I need to pee again. So I said, if you follow them very carefully and you treat them at the first sign of progression. And welcome home. 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