For Richard Master, the health-care conundrum got personal.

He was in Chile with his wife, Susan, and son, Aaron, to meet the future in-laws of his son’s fiancee, Paz. After arriving in Santiago, Aaron developed an asthma reaction. At a pharmacy, they expected to pay $150 for an inhaler. “Low and behold, it cost $15,” Master recalls.

“I turned to him and Paz, his fiancee, and said, ‘We have to do something about this,’” Master recalls. That was in 2013.

Three years later, that “something” is the film, “Fix It: Healthcare at the Tipping Point,” to be shown at 7:30 p.m. April 4, Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas, ArtsQuest Center, SteelStacks, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem. The screening is free and open to the public.

Seating for the approximate one-hour screening is limited to about 200. There’s a post-film discussion that includes David J. Steil, a former Bucks County state representative (1993-2008) and former head of Healthare Now! Pennsylvania. Reservations are recommended: cKowal@mcsframe.com, 610-250-2625

Master, who lives with his wife in Bethlehem, owns MCS Industries, Inc., a Palmer Township based international manufacturer of picture frames and decorative mirrors. With sales approaching $200 million, MCS products are sold in Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Walmart, Home Depot, Michaels and A.C. Moore.

MCS, which Master founded in 1980, has 170 employees in the United States, mostly in design, administration and distribution. The firm manufactures most of its products in subsidiaries in Mexico and China.

“MCS had been experiencing double-digit annual increases in its health-care costs for well over 10 years,” Master says. MCS spends about $1.5 million annually to provide access to health care for its employees and their dependents.

“We also experienced, to remain competitive, a change in the quality of the insurance we could afford to provide our employees. Meaning, the out-of-pocket expenses, such as deductibles and co-pays and premiums shares that our employees had to absorb, kept increasing.

“The costs were going up dramatically. They more than doubled in 10 years. They grew to the point where a family policy for a distribution-level employee was approaching $9 per hour in total, including premium share, not including out-of-pocket expenses, which could be another $3,000 to $5,000.

“At the same time, we do a lot of international travel. We are aware of the cost of medical care in other countries.”

Following his Chile revelation, Master says, “I came back to the Valley and called a good friend of mine, Vincent Mondillo, who has worked on the History Channel and other documentaries, and proposed a modest project.

“And it turned into a two-year saga of travel throughout the U.S., Canada, meeting with experts, economists, doctors. It turned into this movie,” says Master, executive producer of “Fix It “Fix It: Healthcare at the Tipping Point.”

Master and Mondillo interviewed, among others, economists at Princeton, Harvard, Yale and the University Of Massachusetts.

“It appeared that every rock that we turned over in our research gave us a sense that this is a very threatening circumstance for the U.S.,” Master says.

“The health-care system has provided wonderful care for many Americans. There is a lot of dedication and service within these professions. Nevertheless, in the macroeconomic sense, it represents an existential threat to the country.

“We went from a national health-care cost, which was about 7 percent of the national economy, to the point where it’s exceeding 18 percent now, where the growth rate in overall health care is 2 to 3 percent above the annual growth of the economy.

“While that doesn’t sound like a lot, if it’s relentless growth, it represents that the health-care costs are running away,” says Master who received a BS in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Juris Doctor from the Columbia Law School of Columbia University.

There have been 10,000 DVDs of “Fix It” distributed. It was shown in November at the Physicians for National Health Program conference and at Healthcare Now!, both in Chicago. The film has also been shown on 300 TV stations in New England and throughout the nation.

Mondillo says 80 interviews were conducted up and down the East Coast, including New York, Philadelphia and Boston; in California, and in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, with approximately 40 included in the film. An estimated 100-plus hours was edited down to the 58-minute film, which was completed last year.

“I’ve always been concerned about anybody who doesn’t have health insurance and what that ultimately can do,” Mondillo says.

“It’s always been a fundamental issue that people should have health-care,” says Mondillo who has edited, directed and produced documentaries for Lou Reda Productions Inc. for the History Channel, A&E and Biography and written, directed and produced documentaries for Valley nonprofits, including the The YMCA of Easton, Phillipsburg and Vicinity and The National Canal Museum.

“What we discovered in making the film was that the economic impact of health-care costs affects our ability to improve infrastructure, our cities, our schools and our businesses,” Mondillo says.

“A significant impact of an employee’s benefits is health care, but that impact is much bigger than most of us realize. And it has a significant impact on companies,” continues Mondillo.

“We hear talk of flat wages all the time. When you have double-digit health increases, it’s apparent why that’s the case,” Mondillo claims.

“We would like people to look at this as an economic issue and not through the typical frame of ideology,” adds Mondillo.

“A lot of people over the years have talked about the uninsured. But people don’t talk about the underinsured, meaning high-deductables and high out-of-pocket. That has a huge impact on people with serious illness. Medical costs are still the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy in the country. And the majority of those are people who have insurance,” according to Mondillo.

“Doctors and nurses have such an immense burden dealing with paperwork and getting patients what they need. And that has gotten worse than ever,” Mondillo says.

“The idea for this is to reframe the health-care issue in terms of economics and impact on businesses and families.

“And this all ties into quality. What good is having the best hospitals in the world, which we arguably do? There’s very little doubt that we have the best health care in the world. But unless everyone has access to it, in terms of outcomes, we don’t do very well,” Mondillo says.

Information: fixithealthcare.com