Gov. Phil Bredesen addresses the audience at the Chattanooga Convention Center in this file photo.

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As former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen took the stage at The Chattanoogan hotel to address a room full of doctors Wednesday night, he began by saying that since the time mankind lived in caves, healers have been among the most honored people in society.

I want to say that at the outset, said Bredesen, because you are about to hear me be very critical of some of things in the health care system we have today.

Bredesen, who before his governorship was the founder of health care management company HealthAmerica Corp., spoke at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine Chattanoogas Internal Medicine Update.

Held on the one-year anniversary of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the evenings talks focused on evolving health care policy.

Bredesen said the new law does not get to the root of the unwieldy problems of the American health care system, which, he charged, is the most expensive in the world while its quality remains average or inferior to other comparable nations.

Instead, the law doubles down on a massively wasteful system that needs substantial overhaul.

If you took Americas current health insurance model and applied it to homeowners insurance, he said, damage repair would look like a bunch of disconnected construction: No general contractor, no building codes and with each worker spending money on whatever materials he thought necessary on the expectation that insurance would pay for it.

More standardized measures of quality care are essential to improve medical performance, he argued. And without more tension between buyer and seller in the health care market, health costs will only continue to skyrocket, he said.

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Bredesen: More must be done for health care