My junior high offered a typing class which I took even though my mother taught me the proper way to type much earlier so she could enlist me in some free child labor for the printing business she had when I was a kid. Somehow she was safe from laws against it and didn’t get in trouble for doing so. By the time I took typing class I was ahead of everyone else and was able to write dirty notes to Billy “Gummy Hair” Duffy and amuse ourselves enormously with Muammar al-Gaddafi jokes which I probably barely understood.

Billy got a wad of gum slapped on the top of his head by a girl on the bus ride home when he joked: “Hey, you want to hear a joke that will knock your tits off? Oh. You already heard it.”

His hair grew back like crab grass that year and my amusement of him doubled. Still, he knew how to type fast and became my partner in crime in that class. Remember when we had correction paper to fix typing errors using typewriters? And the white film on it used to rub off on our fingers? Billy and I thought it was funny to take it to the bathroom with us and rub it on our noses so that when we returned our typing teacher thought we had been snorting coke in the toilet stalls.

God, I miss junior high!

Except, I’m sort of still in it. Probably serves me right.

ANYWAY, I type fast and that story was to tell you that I typed Steve Case’s answers to my serious health care questions about his new website. Obviously, I cleaned them up a bit and added some helpful addendums.

Kelly: I like what you have been saying about the “Wisdom of the Crowds” [contributing to the culture we build on the Internet] especially as an educator and the mother of 2 children with ADHD. How can Revolution Health help address issues that are such a gap for parents, teachers, and health care providers? I realize that this is a huge question and I’m asking if you will have places where ADHD questions can be answered for parents and teachers can use it as a resource and doctors will aid in that discussion.

Steve: It is a huge question because health care is a $2 trillion industry and we’re launching the site to be able to help address those issues. We do have a section on each of these divisions partnering with leading non-profit organization to have more of a policy aspect on issues like this. Part of it is just giving parents tools to better understand what might be going on [with regard to] their options – over time we’re hoping to build momentum. We do want to partner with everybody! It’s so fragmented that we hope to be a place this can come together. I’m sure it’s a big number, but if you were to Google ADHD you would come up with too much information.

Kelly: That’s true. There are over 129,000,000 hits on Google for that search.

Steve: That’s a lot! This is where we hope to help.

The site offers a place where you can register and keep a medical profile of your own. Since they employ former insurance company workers who will advocate on your behalf with your own insurance company when you have difficulty, I wondered about how comfortable people will feel about giving out personal information.

Kelly: Are there confidentiality issues with giving out information like that?

Steve: We’ve put together a privacy policy. If you want us to call your insurance company, we do ask that you sign the policy and fax it to us.

My next question came after Jenny asked about the influence that advertisers could have over the site and was a follow-up to his answer about providing advertising from drug companies but not in an unfair manner.
Kelly: Will you have a rating system or a way to determine if this is successful? How will you provide a check and balance for yourself?

Steve: Every article will have a rating system and people can rate them [at will]. We also have Mayo Clinic and about 25 other different sources which will contribute to the site that can be rated. This is the ‘people powered’ aspect of this. Ultimately, people rate doctors and articles and this gives us that kind of feedback.

In retrospect, I was happy with his answers and the way the whole thing played out. If I had to do it over again I would only change the fact that once all of us “clocked in” with our conference calling code that no one gave a BlogHer Reunion shout out and hollered, “Wazzup, girls?!”

It would have also been a great time for a tit joke.