Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare

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  • Opened October 5, 2012 (Limited)
  • 1 hr 40 min
  • PG-13 | Some thematic material

  • Our healthcare system is broken. Potent forces fight to maintain the status quo in a medical industry created for quick fixes, rather than prevention; for profit-driven, rather than patient-driven, care. Healthcare is at the center of an intense political firestorm in our nation's capitol. But the current battle over cost and access does not ultimately address the root of the problem: we have a disease-care system, not a healthcare one. After decades of opposition, a movement to introduce innovative high-touch, low-cost methods of prevention and healing is finally gaining ground. With consummate skill, filmmakers Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke interweave dramatic personal stories with the efforts of leaders battling to transform healthcare at the highest levels of medicine, industry, government, and even the U.S. military. Destined to be hailed as the definitive film on American healthcare, ESCAPE FIRE offers a way out—a primer on how to save the health of a nation. Full synopsis

  • Cast: Don Berwick, Shannon Brownlee, Steve Burd, David Fridovich, Wayne Jonas, Roy Litton, Erin Martin, Steven Nissen, Yvonne Osborn, Dean Ornish, Wendell Potter, Andrew Weil, Robert Yates
  • Director: Susan Froemke, Matthew Heineman
  • Genres: Art House/Foreign, Documentary

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Fan Reviews

Must Go!
no better time then now!

by Simkomc

This is truly a great movie for NOW as the presidential elect drags on. We need solutions....

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Critic Reviews

88
Chicago Sun-Times
| Roger Ebert

When we speak of "American health care," we should in fact be calling it "American sickness care." There's more money to be made in making people sick and healing them than in keeping them well in the first place. The documentary Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare makes this argument with stunning clarity. Read full review

83
The Playlist
| Katie Walsh

Ultimately, while 'Escape Fire' proposes numerous options for changing the system-- getting Medicare to cover healthy lifestyle counseling programs, incentivizing doctors to spend time with patients, and patients to empower their own health-- the one that is most poignant is that people should spend the time to take care of each other. Read full review

80
Los Angeles Times
| Kenneth Turan

Cogent, convincing, determinedly non-ideological, Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare tells us that everything we think we know about that incendiary topic might be wrong. And it offers us a way out of the morass. Read full review

75
San Francisco Chronicle
| Walter Addiego

That the movie largely sidesteps partisan politics will no doubt irk some viewers, but may just be its greatest strength. Read full review

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Robert Yates in "Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare."