Health care reform needs a heath check.

In the never ending debate the best and most pragmatic opinion offered is by Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D. The number one "New York Times" best-selling author. He wrote "Healthy Aging."

From last night's larry king live:

WEIL: OK. First of all, we don't have a health care system in this country, we have a disease management system that's horribly dysfunctional and getting worse by the day. And the vast majority of disease that we're trying to manage is lifestyle related and, therefore, preventable.

So what we really need to do is to shift our energies away from disease management toward making people healthy and preventing them from getting sick. And that means that I think a society wide effort of -- of everyone pulling in the same direction. You can't have the government telling us to eat more fruits and vegetables and at the same time, through its subsidy program, ensuring that fruits and vegetables are the most expensive things in grocery stores and all the unhealthy stuff is the cheapest. You know, everything has to work together here.

Secondly, the kinds of interventions that we're using to treat disease are way too expensive because they're dependent on technology. I include pharmaceuticals in that. We need a new kind of medicine in which doctors know how and patients accept low tech, high touch approaches to the treatment of illness.

Some immediate things. I would immediately ban direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceutical drugs. That's been a disaster for patients and doctors and a great boon to the drug companies. No other company -- no other country in the world allows that except New Zealand. Stop that right away.

Secondly, I'd set up an office...

KING: And what else?

WEIL: I'd set up an office of health education in the Department of Education with adequate funds to get serious about K through 12 health education, starting with teaching kids about what health is and what lifestyle choices promote it. I think education is something that we could really be serious about.

You know, I heard the president last night talk about prevention very briefly. And he talked about mammograms and colonoscopies. To me, that is such a superficial aspect of prevention. You know, the meat of prevention is about teaching people how to make the right choices about food, how to keep your body physically active, how to deal with stress.