15 Seconds to Better Health Care July 29, 2009March 15, 2017 HEALTH Want a public option? This takes 15 seconds. Join me in signing it? HEALTH II Eat less, save money, live longer, be healthier, improve our national economic strength (because as you’ve doubtless heard, our epidemic obesity is setting us back $147 billion a year in added health care costs). You’ll even cut oil imports – it takes less fuel to propel lighter passengers. Now will you ix-nay on the ed-bray, eat apples instead of donuts, and walk more? Here’s a book that may help. The Gabriel Method: The Revolutionary DIET-FREE Way to Totally Transform Your Body. I haven’t read it. I was certainly skeptical of the hype. But as you’ll see, the reader reviews are glowing. (“I finally gave up on dieting, and in the past two years I’ve lost over 30 pounds.”) HEALTH III Howard Dean, guest hosting for Keith Olbermann, interviewed Philip Longman last night. Longman – author of Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care is Better Than Yours – had an intriguing twist on all this. As part of the public option, why not go to all the public hospitals in the country that are in such trouble, many of them in danger of closing, “and say basically this: if you will adopt the VA protocols of care, if you will wire up your hospital with their software and use it, and we’ll help you to do that, we will guarantee you this new pool of patients that have been recently mandated – and then we’ll have an actual delivery vehicle for their care, and the Congressional Budget Office and others will actually be able to score with realistic estimates what it will cost.” The VA is generally acknowledged to provide great care – even conservative powerbroker Bill Kristol inadvertently admitted that Monday night – and it’s done at relatively low cost. Longman says the VA’s cost per patient has actually been gloing down. Demand the public option! It takes 15 seconds. HEALTH IV Watch Bill Maher ask why we stick to a profit-driven private business model for health care. Or read the full, albeit sanitized, version. Actually, they are sufficiently different, it’s worth doing both. And then take the 15 seconds.