Fresh Medicine How to Fix Reform and Build a Sustainable Health Care System

"American health care, which has come so far in the last century, seems now to have lost its way. Its productivity has stagnated, with its growth in cost far outstripping its gain in effectiveness. Its blueprint is obsolete: a design for acute illness when chronic illness increasingly absorbs our resources and shortens our lives. Entrenched interests paralyze it just when it most needs to change and adapt."

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen carefully explains why our present system of health care, including "Obama care", cannot be sustained, and he offers his well thought out ideas regarding a complete overhaul. Since his career has been heavily involved with the current health care system, he brings first-hand expert knowledge to the issue.

Bredesen begins by exploring the problems with the new reform. Congress and the Obama Administration have added over 30 million more people into an obsolete broken system and done little to address the underlying problems, he argues. Bredesen then looks back and explains how the system evolved over the past century from the local doctor making house calls to today’s sprawling insurance model. Although health insurance started out as real insurance to cover hospitalization, Bredesen argues that what it pays for today is vastly different: drugs, doctor visits, and the treatment of chronic disease that extends over many years.