The Patient Accountability and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is a reasonable first step in health reform, but much more needs to be done. That’s primarily because Obamacare is still dependent on health insurance, which turned health care into an industry that profits from the perverse incentives of treating patients as paying customers. This health care industry  often works to keep patients as paying customers by treating their symptoms rather than providing real cures, and prescribing drugs, performing procedures, and doing unnecessary tests. Since that’s how practitioners are paid, it’s what they do.

The following videos explain how our money-driven system of medicine works, and what’s wrong with it. The video series then ends with an easy-to-understand animated explanation of Obamacare. It’s all offered to help you understand new changes in the law, and several related articles can be found HERE.

Money-Driven Medicine

Money-Driven Medicine provides an essential introduction to addressing the unmet healthcare policy challenges of the next decade. Inspired by Maggie Mahar’s acclaimed book, Money Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much, it offers a systemic look at the economics underlying – and often undermining — our $2.6 trillion healthcare system.

Money-Driven Medicine is one of the strongest documentaries I have seen in years and could not be more timely. (PBS’s Bill Moyers)

TRAILER

Dr. Donald Burwick

 

Health Care Sound & Fury, ABC Nightling

 

Patients for Sale

 

Not the Best; Only the Most Expensive

 

Questioning Health Care

 

Physician Focus

 

Interview with the Filmmakers

 

Health Reform Hits Main Street

Are you still confused about how the new health reform law really works and if it will resolve the issues identified above? The following short, animated movie — featuring the “YouToons” — explains the problems with the current health care system, the changes that are happening now, and the big changes coming in 2014. Learn more about how the health reform law will affect the health insurance coverage options for individuals, families and businesses with the interactive feature “Illustrating Health Reform: How Health Insurance Coverage Will Work.”

The animation above was written and produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Narrated by Cokie
Roberts, a news commentator for ABC News and NPR and a member of Kaiser’s Board of Trustees.
Creative production and animation by Free Range Studios.

So what’s next in Health Care Reform?

I’m largely on the same page as Dr. Donald Berwick in calling for a single payer system and hope that Obamacare evolves in that direction. But I also see great benefits in capitalism and private sector innovation. That’s why I proposed a hybrid public/private model of health care that combines the best incentives of each. Please share your own views in comments below.