America has a worsening hospital crisis. The new documentary "American Hospitals" charts a way out of it.
"American Hospitals: Healing a Broken System," is now available on Google Play, Apple TV, Prime Video and Vudu.
America has a worsening hospital crisis. Big urban hospitals are merging and sitting on piles of cash and paying their executives millions of dollars while hospitals serving low income neighborhoods and rural communities are closing left and right. The prices some big hospital systems charge are outrageously high, pushing even insured patients deep in debt because of outrageously high deductibles demanded by Big Insurance.
A documentary I helped produce, American Hospitals: Healing a Broken System, details the unequal fortunes of U.S. hospitals and is now available on Google Play, Apple TV, Prime Video and Vudu.
American Hospitals: Healing a Broken System Trailer:
The documentary features industry experts including Elisabeth Rosenthal, Joshua Sharfstein and Donald Berwick, as well as rural and urban clinicians, patients, business leaders and legislators giving an on-the-ground glimpse into the fate of many U.S. hospitals.
Produced by the Unfinished Business Foundation, founded by Richard Master, CEO of MCS Industries Inc., and filmmakers Vincent Mondillo and Henry Nevison, American Hospitals is the fourth in a series of documentaries following Fix It: Healthcare at the Tipping Point; Big Pharma: Market Failure and Big Money Agenda: Democracy on the Brink.
As I reported earlier this year, the film has already helped to get some of Washington’s most prominent lawmakers to pay more attention to what is happening in the hospital business and to hold massive hospital systems more accountable.
A bipartisan group of senators–Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), and Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia)–sent a letter to the IRS and Treasury Department calling on both agencies to more clearly define federal laws that mandate non-profit hospitals’ “community benefit,” and prohibit discrimination and predatory billing practices.
As you will see in this documentary, the new interest on Capitol Hill is encouraging but more needs to be done. American Hospitals: Healing a Broken System explains how we got in this mess and, most importantly, charts a way to get out of it. Find ways to watch the documentary here.