CIR Hosts Screening of the Movie Money Driven Medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital

The U.S. spends twice as much per person on health care as the average developed nation, yet our outcomes, especially for chronic diseases, are often worse. How did we get to this point? That’s the central question that Maggie Mahar set out to answer in her book Money Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much.

On April 7, 2010, CIR hosted a screening of the documentary based on Ms. Mahar’s book at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. Resident physicians, nurses, and community members came out to see the film and to participate in a question-and-answer session with the author.


CIR Regional Vice President Dr. Greg Dodell introduced
author, journalist and blogger Maggie Mahar.

In the film, Ms. Mahar explains that it was important for her to hear directly from doctors about how our profit-driven health care affects the way they practice medicine.  The film depicts the human cost of the focus on profit over health through the stories of patients and doctors who find themselves ensnared in the system.  One of the most commanding interviews in the film involves Dr. Donald Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and President Obama’s nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), who provided thoughtful examples of how the business incentives of medicine warp the practice of medicine.

The residents who attended the film found it provocative. “They talked a lot about the oversupply of health care and the disparities between the ability to deliver the basic necessities of health care versus super-high tech, marginally beneficial health care,” said Dr. Patrick Coady, a PGY1 in Internal Medicine at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt. "The point of the movie is it’s driven by the medical-industrial complex."

Dr. David Dada, a PGY2 in Psychiatry at Harlem Hospital, appreciated the comparisons to other countries' health care systems, having trained in family medicine in Nigeria and surgery in the West Indies . "The film is excellent. I would like all the doctors and the executives of Harlem Hospital to watch this," he said. "I’ve been talking to those in Internal Medicine about primary care and its importance."

While the examples in the film are troubling, Ms. Mahar was optimistic about changes to come through the new health care reform law, as well as the new leadership role of CMS under Dr. Berwick. She emphasized benefits like the large influx of money for scholarships and loan forgiveness keyed to primary care, which will entice more new physicians to go into primary care specialties. She was also hopeful about the creation of new community health clinics, which she said will be well-funded and can serve as patient-centered medical homes. Perhaps most importantly, she said, Dr. Berwick, if confirmed, can use Medicare as a lever for improving the quality of health care, by reducing inefficiencies and rewarding programs and providers who achieve good outcomes.