Healthcare Myths, Python Hunting, Hmong Stories

Lots of Our Assumptions about America’s Healthcare System Are Wrong Guest: Arthur Garson, MD, Director, Health Policy Institute, Texas Medical Center, Co-Author of “Exposing the 20 Medical Myths: Why Everything You Know About Health Care is Wrong and How to Make it Right.” Twenty-five cents out of every dollar Americans spend on healthcare is wasted, according to a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That wasted money isn’t making us any healthier. It’s not improving the quality of the care we receive. It’s just down the drain. How can the richest, most developed country in the world be so wasteful when it comes to the thing that matters most to us? Well, for one thing, pediatric cardiologist Arthur Garson says we’re holding on to a lot of misconceptions about how health care works in America. Veterans Hunt Invasive Florida Pythons Guest: Tom Rahill, Founder, Swamp Apes Florida’s Everglades are crawling with thousands of Burmese Pythons, and they’re destroying the ecosystem. It’s such a huge problem that the state government has turned to bounty hunters to track down pythons and kill them. Tom Rahill is an IT guy by day and a snake hunter by night. But for him, it’s about more than the money or saving the Everglades-its therapy. Rahill believes python hunting especially helps veterans and runs a non-profit called Swamp Apes to bring them along. Overcoming A Key Hurdle Toward a Future of 3D Printed Organs Guest: Mark Skylar-Scott, PhD, Research Associate, Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering All over the world, scientists are trying to figure out how to make a human organ. Just imagine if instead of waiting for a heart transplant, a patient’s own cells could be coaxed to grow a new heart. There have been some amazing breakthroughs along those lines, but one of the main problems is how to make sure that all the newly-grown cells coming together in the shape of a heart get the blood and oxygen they need to thrive. They don’t just automatical