The most significant initiative coming out of the Obama administration was led by the First Lady; I’m talking about her effort to change the eating habits of Americans. There was even some legislation passed in support.

‘The effort culminated in 2010 with the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which allowed the U.S. Agriculture Department to set new nutritional standards for all food sold in schools for the first time in more than 30 years. The new requirements called for increased servings of fruits, vegetables and whole grains in meals, as well as decreases in the amount of sodium and sugar and a ban on transfats.’ (Modern Healthcare – http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160823/NEWS/160829986 )

Pity her husband didn’t follow her lead.

I’ve never spoken to Lady Obama (okay, the title is imaginative but she deserves it, or something like it) so I don’t know whether she recognized her initiative as the necessary first step toward fixing what’s wrong with our so-called Health Care System.

That begins with food; good food must be made affordable.

The second item on my list is the environment. Clean Air and Water are essential to good health, not to forget the nasty things (like RoundUp which is sold in stores everywhere and used by people to treat the weeds in their lawns. It’s made by Monsanto so it gets a pass on public safety scrutiny. See here – http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150422-glyphosate-roundup-herbicide-weeds/) that are pervasive and persistent.

Then comes Preventive Medicine (Dr. Andrew Weil was an advocate of this approach in the early days of the Obama Healthcare debate – they ejected him from the room pretty quickly).

Only then can we talk intelligently about access to expensive, life-prolonging medical technology. I’m talking here about things like organ transplants, bio-engineered body parts, and plastic surgery.

A healthy citizenry, well-fed and informed about best practices for maintaining health, will have little need of these wonderful hi-tech medical gadgets. In catastrophic accidents perhaps, but these will be few in the context of a fully functioning Health Care System.

I would like to see the Progressives get into the debate on the future of Healthcare in a more meaningful way but Sanders seems stuck in the Obama rut of Health Insurance Reform.

We need a Health Care Revolution.