Deb and I have been back on Kauai for over two weeks, catching up with neighbors and friends here and going to our many famers’ markets filled with the best local produce. Long early morning walks with Charlie, our five year old doggie prince, take us through local neighborhoods, golf course and down the hill to a mostly deserted beach. We’re tired at the end of every day.

Two neighbors brought us very good news. One, a middle aged woman, is a serious jock- hiking, running, cycling, sailing, competitive paddling, including open ocean to other islands. She was an omnivore eating lots of fruits and veggies but switched to an almost entirely whole food plant based diet since January when we last saw her. Twenty pounds lighter she looks like Wonder Woman now and feels great. The second is also a middle aged woman who exercised little, mainly due to achy knees. She switched from a SAD to one that was heavy on whole plant foods but not vegetarian. She lost 17 pounds since January, looks and feels terrific, and can take long walks without knee pain.

Food can change your life and bring great joy!

More people, computers, space = more costs for a medical home compared to a standard medical practice and these costs have to come from patients or taxpayers.

Quickly, visits to ERs plummet and hospitalizations decrease neutralizing much of the increased cost of the medical homes, but some big medical centers don’t want hospitalizations to decrease. Longer term patients are less sick thereby using fewer medical services and drugs, but drug companies and medical centers don’t want this to happen. As more medical homes emphasize lifestyle medicine, especially a whole food plant based diet, medical costs plummet, but drug companies, insurance companies, medical centers, specialty physicians (the legacy players of Pearl’s book Mistreated) are then taking a big hit.

Is the idea that lifestyle medicine can reduce total health costs an unproven hypothesis? No! McDougall and Ornish have both published well designed studies documenting large drops in the total cost of medical care in patients who are trained and monitored by lifestyle medical practices. And most patients will adhere to this program when it is well and logically presented.

The medical home, also known as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), is a team-based health care delivery model led by a health care provider to provide comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients with a goal to obtain maximal health outcomes. (Wikipedia)

As discussed in prior blogs the American medical care system is broken, controlled by big businesses (insurance, drug companies, large medical centers) who profit from an inefficient model and are permitted to take huge amounts of money designated for health care. A good way of observing this is by checking the stock prices for these companies over the last 30 years and the salaries of CEOs at these companies and large medical centers. Because of our giant national medical bill attempts to increase expenses by caring for the poor and those needing extensive, expensive services are often rejected by taxpayers. Our congresspeople and state legislators get so much money from big business that policies to limit drug prices and control by private insurers are rarely initiated and more rarely successful. A rebellious legislator knows that lots of money will be flowing to opponents’ campaign coffers if she supports change to the protection given health care businesses.

The medical home system has had limited acceptance primarily because it costs more. But it returns a much better level of care, especially for access, prevention and management of chronic illness, often emphasizing lifestyle medicine. A notable exception to the limitation of medical homes has been through the work of Phil Cass in Columbus, Ohio. His story is summarized in a long interview:

http://wc4.net/t?ctl=11391:9BDC6F42C2F677722F49C4D52D4AE2C5&