Today’s News & Culture update: Matthew Heineman is co-director and producer of Escape Fire, the newly released documentary film I’ve featured on this blog and that takes a close, hard look at our nation’s broken healthcare system.

Here is an interview with Heineman: New Health Care Documentary Offers Potential Solutions to Unsustainable System. In answer to the question, “What is the most shocking thing you learned about our health care system?” he says we have, “. . . a disease care system not a health care system. A system that profits from and is oriented towards sickness, not health. This idea that 75 percent  of health care costs go to [treating] preventable diseases – that was shocking to us. So how do we as a society figure out how to fix that problem? Another thing that really surprised us was this idea of over-treatment – that more isn’t better. I think in America we have this fascination for a quick fix, for something bigger, better, faster, now.”

Heineman offers his own conclusions in Huff Post’s Healthy Living section: Access to What Kind of Health Care? His question at the end of his blog got me thinking about what a sustainable health care system would like like. What’s the “new normal”? For anyone who values spiritual care, the lower-cost, health-centered approach he suggests would ideally include a system that recognizes and values spiritual treatment, including Christian Science treatment options. Care that isn’t a break-the-bank, disease and diagnosis focused method, but rather is affordable and focuses on the individual’s mental and physical health and well-being.

Heineman writes, “Let’s stop running up the hill, needlessly sticking to the status quo, and Continue reading →