Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-will-proposed-health-care-overhaul-affect-patients Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Ray Suarez sits down with medical experts to talk about possible changes to the U.S. health care system as Congress prepares to vote on a major overhaul. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, as the nation considers reforming health care, a discussion on changing the way medical decisions are made.Ray Suarez is in charge. RAY SUAREZ: Since the health care reform debate began months ago, one key goal repeatedly discussed is lowering costs and improving quality by practicing what's called evidence-based medicine. That refers to using scientific data in studies to inform decisions about the most effective treatments.President Obama himself made the case for it during a prime-time news conference earlier this year. U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Why would we want to pay for things that don't work? That aren't making us healthier?And here's what I'm confident about. If doctors and patients have the best information about what works and what doesn't, then they're going to want to pay for what works.If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?But the system right now doesn't incentivize that. Those are the changes that are going to be needed — that we're going to need to make inside the system. RAY SUAREZ: But, in light of the recent uproar over mammograms and cancer screening, there has been questions about whether evidence-based medicine is the right approach in health reform.We get two views from people who have studied it. Dr. Donald Berwick is president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Dr. Jerome Groopman is professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.Dr. Berwick, let me start with you. Give us your best thumbnail definition of evidence-based medicine.DR. DONALD BERWICK, president, Institute for Healthcare Improvement: It's basing decisions we make as doctors and nurses and other practitioners on the experiments and trials that we can do to assess the effectiveness of operations or pills or tests. It's — it's flying with knowledge, instead of flying blind. RAY SUAREZ: So, taking perhaps just a second before moving ahead with a course of treatment and assessing what we know about best results? DR. DONALD BERWICK: Yes. It's making up your mind about what you think works and what doesn't based on evidence, instead of habit or just beliefs.