The health care reform bill has passed and many people will be celebrating that, finally, the United States will work to assure every citizen health insurance that cannot be canceled because you change your job, because you get sick, or for any other reason.

Remember this is just a start to the transformation of health care. While all of the things I worked for with my colleagues Drs. Dean Ornish and Michael Roizen, on Capital hill the last year did not make it into the final bill, a few important things did and we can build on that. In fact, in my last meeting with Senator Harkin in December, he assured me that the passage of this bill would be just the beginning of reform and that after it passed we could move on to healthcare reform 2.0 that addresses more of the underlying issues about not only who is covered but what is covered.

Please note: This blog is a reprint of an article that appeared on Huffington Post a few weeks ago.

This isolated, serene Caribbean island floated in a calm sea dusted by soft white clouds. We circled patiently, waiting to land for hours at 25,000 feet, watching the sunset across the wing of the Gulfstream jet carrying two orthopedic surgeons, a nurse anesthetist, a critical care nurse, and two Haitian intensive care doctors working at Mount Sinai in New York. We were accompanied by Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners In Health, his student in his Global Health and Inequities program at Harvard, and Claire Pierre, a physician born and raised in Haiti.

A kind-hearted, generous man donated his plane to carry us and surgical supplies against innumerable obstacles to finally land in Haiti just as dark set upon this country and people crushed by the worst earthquake devastation in history. My wife and I woke up the Thursday morning after the quake and knew we had to go down right away.

"I didn’t know how bad I was feeling until I started feeling better."

That is what my patients tell me every day. They go from being ill or just okay to experiencing UltraWellness.

Most people don’t know how poorly they feel until they feel better. In fact, most of us don’t recognize that fatigue, digestive problems, aches and pains, allergies, headaches, and more aren’t just annoying symptoms. They are early clues to impending diseases that can disable and kill us.

Most heart disease starts in the womb. You can detect brain changes in teenagers that can predict the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Blood tests in children can predict who will develop diabetes later in life. Most cancers take more than 30 years to grow to the size where they can be detected.

How can we address problems that we don’t even know we have?

There is an answer. It lies in the revolution that is happening in medicine today. That revolution is called functional medicine. I call it UltraWellness, and that is what you are going to learn about today ...

Something extraordinary happened while I was flying back from Seattle to Philadelphia recently.

I was there teaching other doctors about Functional Medicine at The Institute for Functional Medicine (www.functionalmedicine.org). The course was called Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice -- a course that every doctor in America should attend. 

On that flight, I read a powerful book with the potential to alter the course of western medicine. 

It was Jenny McCarthy's new book about her autistic son called "Louder than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism."

Her insightful words spoke to the biggest problem in medicine today. It is a secret that needs to be told, and Jenny McCarthy is determined to do just that.

What's the secret?

==> There IS a "biomedical" treatment for autism.

But what she DIDN'T say was that this biomedical treatment is actually the scientific principles and methods that form the basis of Functional Medicine and the 7 Keys to UltraWellness.

Wow, from the responses to my last blog, it seems like healthcare is second only to religion in inciting active debate!  One of you even told me to save the commentary and stick to practicing medicine!

Thanks to all who contributed to the conversation.

Some said I didn't value Michaels Moore's attempt to highlight the problems with our health care system.  And some may have misinterpreted my criticism of a country and an economy that thrives like a parasite on the sickness and obesity of it citizens as a cynical call to profit from helping people create health.

What I really believe is that there should be an economy of products and services (healthy food, activities, etc.) that promote rather than destroy health.

So let me clarify.