Great profile. Dr. Blumenthal is doing exceptional work and it is very good to see you folks are getting this information out to people. Nice job!

This is an intriguing issue. As a very high user of healthcare (having a malignant brain tumor and surviving eleven years will do that to you), I have seen firsthand a lot of issues with my medical records and care. I have been fortunate that most of my care for this and other issues has been at one institution. I can only imagine how things would have been had it involved multiple entities and care providers.

It would be interesting to see something like a set of Frequently Asked Questions to inform citizens and allow them to interact on this issue. If this issue is anything like health care reform, we know it will be easy to get sidetracked by misperceptions, bad information and emotion.

I, for one, would welcome something that also supports outcome-based treatment so I could have more informed discussions with doctors about alternatives and risks.

In healthcare, we would all benefit from asking ourselves the question: "when Nature made such a marvelously designed product as man, why should it require such a huge and complex system to keep him healthy? Why the millions of drugs and medications? Why the millions of doctors, hospitals, and clinics? Did Nature slip up somewhere?"

We have to be careful when we raise this question with others, because we are likely to be dismissed as hopelessly out of step with the times. Yet raising this question will take us to the root of our healthcare problems, and we cannot escape the answer that our life-style is the root cause of most of our healthcare problems.

So we have a choice -- keep on spending trillions on our present system, and keep bemoaning the increasing costs and inadequate returns, or spend a lot less (still billions, I am sure) and train people to live more in step with Nature.

This does not mean going back to living in the trees again. What does it mean, practically? I dont know! But that's where we need to spend a few billions --- funding research and action programs aimed at developing a life-style which we can all live by, compatible with our civilization, but which does not foul up the beautiful machine that Nature made. A life-style which allows us to continue to make our marvelous scientific discoveries, which are then used to advance our unfoldment as a species.