Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare

“We don’t have a healthcare system in this country, we have a disease management system,” says medical journalist Shannon Brownlee in Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke’s informative documentary Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare. The film highlights the wastefulness of the current system in which 75 percent of the costs go toward Band-Aid treatments for chronic diseases rather than prevention and coordinated care. The film argues persuasively for a paradigm shift away from the profit-based structure, looks at holistic treatment modalities being used in military healthcare, and assembles an impressive lineup of experts, including the Cleveland Clinic’s Cardiovascular Medicine chairman Dr. Steven Nissen, Dr. Dean Ornish, who proved that coronary disease can be reversed through dietary change, and Dr. Andrew Weil, who educates demoralized physicians looking for a better way to help patients.