Erin Martin, DO, the young holistic physician profiled in the documentary, Escape Fire, and a featured speaker at HPC’s upcoming Heal Thy Practice conference, helped CNN’s Sanjay Gupta put UnitedHealth Group’s Chief of Medical Affairs between a rock and a hard place earlier this season.

During a segment entitled “Rescuing Health Care,” Dr. Martin echoed one of the core themes of Escape Fire: that insurance reimbursement is so low, it is nearly impossible for primary care doctors to provide the sort of preventive care that would improve the nation’s health and curtail runaway healthcare spending.

“We have the ability to make huge changes in our patients’ lives and we’re not using that because it’s not reimbursed, and frankly, physicians are not taught how to do that.”As a case in point, she noted that she is reimbursed about $40 on a $213 bill for a 45-minute face-to-face patient visit.”

When Dr. Gupta asked Dr. Tuckson—himself a physician who now manages an insurance company that netted $5.1 billion in 2011–why his company and other insurers simply don’t pay doctors like Erin Martin more, the executive deflected.

“This isn’t a game of this person against that group, or this sector against that sector. But at the end of the day, the American people need solutions. And the one thing they don’t need is a bunch of fingerpointing that doesn’t take us forward.”

Not long after Escape Fire was completed, Dr. Martin conventional care settings to found her own independent, nutrition-focused practice called TrueMed Institute. She says the clinic, located in Hood River, OR, has already reached break-even financially.

She’ll share her story and her practice transformation “lessons learned” at Heal Thy Practice 2013 in Long Beach this October.

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