ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Health Care

Some of us are counting down to this Friday's release of a groundbreaking, award-winning independent film, ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Health Care. The Village Voice describes it as,

"A must-see! An 'Inconvenient Truth' for the healthcare debate"

In case you're wondering what an "escape fire" is, here's a definition from the movie's website:

1. a swath of grassland or forest intentionally ignited in order to provide shelter from an oncoming blaze.

2. an improvised, effective solution to a crisis that cannot be solved using traditional approaches.

It takes its name from the 1949 Mann Gulch fire where 13 firefighters were hopelessly trapped in a wildfire on a Montana hillside. Their leader, Wag Dodge, came up with an inspired solution: burn a patch of grass and lay down in the middle of the scorched earth. That's what he did and encouraged others to do. Tragically, his team chose instead to try to outrun the fire. Dodge survived. The rest of his team did not. He was willing to try something radically different to undo a seemingly hopeless situation. He set a new standard and his industry followed. Escape fires are now standard practice instead of radical departure.

ESCAPE FIRE'S Co-Directors, Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke, explain their purpose:

"We hope our film can help catalyze a paradigm shift in how our country views health and healing."

Its website describes the film this way,

"This film follows dramatic human stories as well as leaders fighting to transform healthcare at the highest levels of medicine, industry, government, and even the US military. ESCAPE FIRE is about finding a way out. It's about saving the health of a nation."

So are we ready for ESCAPE FIRE? I think so. I hope so. Mainstream media seems to be trending toward fuller coverage of alternatives to mainstream health care. For instance the power of spiritually based healing models is gaining more attention. There are many recent examples from The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Houston Chronicle, The Independent and Psychology Today, to name a few.

In one example titled "The Positive Health Effects of Prayer," the author, Russ Gerber, predicts,

“Open-minded men and women, it appears, are the "experts" to watch. In the trenches of health care decision-making everyday, they're challenging long-held assumptions, looking at all the health care options before them, including prayer, and as surveys show they are utilizing prayer to a growing degree. For those who thought health care reform was just about cost control and access, think again.”

It remains to be seen whether ESCAPE FIRE will catch on and capture the attention of mainstream media and the public at large. If it does, we may find ourselves on the cusp of a radical shift in how we perceive our looming healthcare crisis. And that may make all the difference.