This month, host J.J. Goldberg, Editorial Director of the Forward, gets to the bottom of the healthcare industry and finds out about the surprising effects of agricultural trends on consumers.

The head of the Partnership for Quality Care, Kate Navarro-McKay has plenty to say about what’s wrong with the U.S. healthcare system, but she also has lots of ideas for how things can improve — for patients and healthcare workers alike.

Watch a clip from the interview:

Goldberg begins by asking Navarro to describe the Partnership For Quality Care, which is an alliance of unions and healthcare delivery firms (i.e. hospitals and clinics) looking to improve American healthcare. With over 1 million workers who care for 50 million patients annually, Navarro explains, “it’s a large organization that touches a lot of people,” and its goal is to provide “affordable healthcare of the highest quality” to all Americans.

The government is responsible for making sure people have access to healthcare that they can afford, Navarro argues, and when it comes to ideologies and public plans, we need to think about how what sounds good on paper will translate into the real world. Citing the managed care system that sounded so promising in the 1990s as an example, she shows how that system is not working as expected: 47 million people are still uninsured; too much paperwork and business management tasks distract doctors from doctoring; rising costs of overhead mean doctors offer fewer tests and patients lose out; and various other inefficiencies mean money is wasted that should be going to patient care.

Overall, says Navarro, the insurance companies are cleaning up while patients, doctors and other healthcare workers are all hurting.

The way to fix the system, Navarro says, is by increasing its efficiency and value to the consumer — streamlining reams of paperwork into centralized electronic databases, developing a system where a patient’s multiple doctors talk to each other so as to make sure the patient’s overall care makes sense, eliminating waste — so that as much money as possible that’s put into the system goes to the direct care of patients.

Goldberg summarizes Navarro’s vision for the healthcare system as improving the details “so that the nuts and bolts build up” to create an overall system that works, and proclaiming it a good vision indeed.

Then, looking at health from another angle, Goldberg finds out about some surprising effects of agricultural trends on consumers in America and the third world from the Associate Director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACHS), Jeff Stier. ACHS is a non-political organization that advocates for the use of sound science to dictate public policy, and Stier doesn’t shy away from making controversial statements.

Watch a clip from the interview:

According to scientific studies, he says, organic produce is no better than conventional produce, and since it’s more expensive, Americans who want to eat organic will end up eating less. But eating more fruits and vegetables is the key to good health, so the push for organics is hurting Americans, he argues, comparing the organic food trend to a religious belief rather than a policy based on sound science.

The ban on DDT is another hot-button issue that Stier tackles. Admitting that when Rachel Carson led the fight to ban DDT, farmers were using it indiscriminately in ways that were dangerous, Stier nonetheless maintains that the outright ban of the chemicals was a mistake. DDT kills mosquitoes, which spread malaria, a disease wreaking havoc on developing countries. The use of DDT, in moderation, he argues, would save lives, but it has been banned outright, and he thus blames the deaths of millions on Rachel Carson. Stier urges the Jewish community to take on the fight against malaria as a humanitarian cause and to advocate for the use of DDT in the third world.

“Big Pharm” is another issue on Stier’s hot list. Pharmaceutical companies are often demonized as simply out for profits, but such thinking, he argues, goes against the Jewish principle of hakarat hatov (”recognizing good deeds“). While they have done some harmful things, pharmaceutical companies have done much more good than bad by creating drugs that save lives, he says, and as long as they continue to invest their profits into developing new life-saving drugs, more power to them.

Stier’s overall argument is that modern technology has been good for the health of Americans and that it should not be dismissed as “unnatural,” its use therefore discouraged. Chemicals are not bad when used correctly, and things that are natural can be just as harmful. Therefore, modern technology, even bio-technology, should be used whenever possible — carefully, with safeguards, and in moderation — to make our lives better.

J.J.’s Editorial
In closing, Goldberg shares a final thought on the topics discussed. “When we talk about how to make a good society, a moral society,” he says, “very often it comes down to the details. Judaism recognized that a long time ago.” He urges viewers not to get distracted by symbols and ideologies, particularly in the upcoming presidential election, and to focus on the “nuts and bolts of what a candidate intends to do” and the realities of everyday life that really matter.