diff --git a/plugin.md b/plugin.md
index 81855ec38..9fa3dbb0c 100644
--- a/plugin.md
+++ b/plugin.md
@@ -59,10 +59,7 @@ When exporting metrics the *Namespace* should be `plugin.Namespace` (="coredns")
 *Subsystem* should be the name of the plugin. The README.md for the plugin should then also contain
 a *Metrics* section detailing the metrics.
 
-If the plugin supports dynamic health reporting it should also have *Health* section detailing on
-some of its inner workings.
-
-If the plugins supports signalling readiness it should have a *Ready* section detailing how it
+If the plugin supports signalling readiness it should have a *Ready* section detailing how it
 works.
 
 ## Documentation
diff --git a/plugin/erratic/README.md b/plugin/erratic/README.md
index a731bed0f..e3bd79ae8 100644
--- a/plugin/erratic/README.md
+++ b/plugin/erratic/README.md
@@ -33,10 +33,6 @@ erratic {
 
 In case of a zone transfer and truncate the final SOA record *isn't* added to the response.
 
-## Health
-
-This plugin implements dynamic health checking. For every dropped query it turns unhealthy.
-
 ## Ready
 
 This plugin reports readiness to the ready plugin.
diff --git a/plugin/erratic/health.go b/plugin/erratic/health.go
deleted file mode 100644
index 1d9625e16..000000000
--- a/plugin/erratic/health.go
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,14 +0,0 @@
-package erratic
-
-import (
-	"sync/atomic"
-)
-
-// Health implements the health.Healther interface.
-func (e *Erratic) Health() bool {
-	q := atomic.LoadUint64(&e.q)
-	if e.drop > 0 && q%e.drop == 0 {
-		return false
-	}
-	return true
-}
diff --git a/plugin/health/README.md b/plugin/health/README.md
index 6d402c4a8..68afeac06 100644
--- a/plugin/health/README.md
+++ b/plugin/health/README.md
@@ -6,9 +6,8 @@
 
 ## Description
 
-By enabling *health* any plugin that implements
-[health.Healther interface](https://godoc.org/github.com/coredns/coredns/plugin/health#Healther)
-will be queried for it's health. The combined health is exported, by default, on port 8080/health .
+Enabled process wide health endpoint. When CoreDNS is up and running this returns a 200 OK http
+status code. The health is exported, by default, on port 8080/health .
 
 ## Syntax
 
@@ -17,12 +16,9 @@ health [ADDRESS]
 ~~~
 
 Optionally takes an address; the default is `:8080`. The health path is fixed to `/health`. The
-health endpoint returns a 200 response code and the word "OK" when this server is healthy. It returns
-a 503. *health* periodically (1s) polls plugins that exports health information. If any of the
-plugins signals that it is unhealthy, the server will go unhealthy too. Each plugin that supports
-health checks has a section "Health" in their README.
+health endpoint returns a 200 response code and the word "OK" when this server is healthy.
 
-More options can be set with this extended syntax:
+An extra option can be set with this extended syntax:
 
 ~~~
 health [ADDRESS] {
@@ -33,8 +29,8 @@ health [ADDRESS] {
 * Where `lameduck` will make the process unhealthy then *wait* for **DURATION** before the process
   shuts down.
 
-If you have multiple Server Blocks and need to export health for each of the plugins, you must run
-health endpoints on different ports:
+If you have multiple Server Blocks, *health* should only be enabled in one of them (as it is process
+wide). If you really need multiple endpoints, you must run health endpoints on different ports:
 
 ~~~ corefile
 com {
@@ -48,21 +44,6 @@ net {
 }
 ~~~
 
-Note that if you format this in one server block you will get an error on startup, that the second
-server can't setup the health plugin (on the same port).
-
-~~~ txt
-com net {
-    whoami
-    erratic
-    health :8080
-}
-~~~
-
-## Plugins
-
-Any plugin that implements the Healther interface will be used to report health.
-
 ## Metrics
 
 If monitoring is enabled (via the *prometheus* directive) then the following metric is exported:
@@ -96,7 +77,7 @@ Set a lameduck duration of 1 second:
 
 ## Bugs
 
-When reloading, the Health handler is stopped before the new server instance is started.
-If that new server fails to start, then the initial server instance is still available and DNS queries still served,
-but Health handler stays down.
-Health will not reply HTTP request until a successful reload or a complete restart of CoreDNS.
+When reloading, the health handler is stopped before the new server instance is started. If that
+new server fails to start, then the initial server instance is still available and DNS queries still
+served, but health handler stays down. Health will not reply HTTP request until a successful reload
+or a complete restart of CoreDNS.
diff --git a/plugin/health/health.go b/plugin/health/health.go
index 7f35b0709..895704409 100644
--- a/plugin/health/health.go
+++ b/plugin/health/health.go
@@ -5,7 +5,6 @@ import (
 	"io"
 	"net"
 	"net/http"
-	"sync"
 	"time"
 
 	clog "github.com/coredns/coredns/plugin/pkg/log"
@@ -22,18 +21,12 @@ type health struct {
 	nlSetup bool
 	mux     *http.ServeMux
 
-	// A slice of Healthers that the health plugin will poll every second for their health status.
-	h []Healther
-	sync.RWMutex
-	ok bool // ok is the global boolean indicating an all healthy plugin stack
-
-	stop     chan bool
-	pollstop chan bool
+	stop chan bool
 }
 
 // newHealth returns a new initialized health.
 func newHealth(addr string) *health {
-	return &health{Addr: addr, stop: make(chan bool), pollstop: make(chan bool)}
+	return &health{Addr: addr, stop: make(chan bool)}
 }
 
 func (h *health) OnStartup() error {
@@ -51,12 +44,10 @@ func (h *health) OnStartup() error {
 	h.nlSetup = true
 
 	h.mux.HandleFunc(path, func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
-		if h.Ok() {
-			w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
-			io.WriteString(w, ok)
-			return
-		}
-		w.WriteHeader(http.StatusServiceUnavailable)
+		// We're always healthy.
+		w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
+		io.WriteString(w, ok)
+		return
 	})
 
 	go func() { http.Serve(h.ln, h.mux) }()
@@ -72,11 +63,6 @@ func (h *health) OnFinalShutdown() error {
 		return nil
 	}
 
-	// Stop polling plugins
-	h.pollstop <- true
-	// NACK health
-	h.SetOk(false)
-
 	if h.lameduck > 0 {
 		log.Infof("Going into lameduck mode for %s", h.lameduck)
 		time.Sleep(h.lameduck)
@@ -84,8 +70,8 @@ func (h *health) OnFinalShutdown() error {
 
 	h.ln.Close()
 
-	h.stop <- true
 	h.nlSetup = false
+	close(h.stop)
 	return nil
 }
 
diff --git a/plugin/health/health_test.go b/plugin/health/health_test.go
index acd06ea37..21433c975 100644
--- a/plugin/health/health_test.go
+++ b/plugin/health/health_test.go
@@ -6,43 +6,23 @@ import (
 	"net/http"
 	"testing"
 	"time"
-
-	"github.com/coredns/coredns/plugin/erratic"
 )
 
 func TestHealth(t *testing.T) {
 	h := newHealth(":0")
-	h.h = append(h.h, &erratic.Erratic{})
 
 	if err := h.OnStartup(); err != nil {
 		t.Fatalf("Unable to startup the health server: %v", err)
 	}
 	defer h.OnFinalShutdown()
 
-	go func() {
-		<-h.pollstop
-		return
-	}()
-
 	// Reconstruct the http address based on the port allocated by operating system.
 	address := fmt.Sprintf("http://%s%s", h.ln.Addr().String(), path)
 
-	// Nothing set should return unhealthy
 	response, err := http.Get(address)
 	if err != nil {
 		t.Fatalf("Unable to query %s: %v", address, err)
 	}
-	if response.StatusCode != 503 {
-		t.Errorf("Invalid status code: expecting '503', got '%d'", response.StatusCode)
-	}
-	response.Body.Close()
-
-	h.poll()
-
-	response, err = http.Get(address)
-	if err != nil {
-		t.Fatalf("Unable to query %s: %v", address, err)
-	}
 	if response.StatusCode != 200 {
 		t.Errorf("Invalid status code: expecting '200', got '%d'", response.StatusCode)
 	}
@@ -60,18 +40,10 @@ func TestHealth(t *testing.T) {
 func TestHealthLameduck(t *testing.T) {
 	h := newHealth(":0")
 	h.lameduck = 250 * time.Millisecond
-	h.h = append(h.h, &erratic.Erratic{})
 
 	if err := h.OnStartup(); err != nil {
 		t.Fatalf("Unable to startup the health server: %v", err)
 	}
 
-	// Both these things are behind a sync.Once, fake reading from the channels.
-	go func() {
-		<-h.pollstop
-		<-h.stop
-		return
-	}()
-
 	h.OnFinalShutdown()
 }
diff --git a/plugin/health/healther.go b/plugin/health/healther.go
deleted file mode 100644
index 8bb6c907c..000000000
--- a/plugin/health/healther.go
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,36 +0,0 @@
-package health
-
-// Healther interface needs to be implemented by each plugin willing to provide
-// healthhceck information to the health plugin. Note this method should return
-// quickly, i.e. just checking a boolean status, as it is called every second
-// from the health plugin.
-type Healther interface {
-	// Health returns a boolean indicating the health status of a plugin.
-	// False indicates unhealthy.
-	Health() bool
-}
-
-// Ok returns the global health status of all plugin configured in this server.
-func (h *health) Ok() bool {
-	h.RLock()
-	defer h.RUnlock()
-	return h.ok
-}
-
-// SetOk sets the global health status of all plugin configured in this server.
-func (h *health) SetOk(ok bool) {
-	h.Lock()
-	defer h.Unlock()
-	h.ok = ok
-}
-
-// poll polls all healthers and sets the global state.
-func (h *health) poll() {
-	for _, m := range h.h {
-		if !m.Health() {
-			h.SetOk(false)
-			return
-		}
-	}
-	h.SetOk(true)
-}
diff --git a/plugin/health/setup.go b/plugin/health/setup.go
index 5a1725125..19aeba58d 100644
--- a/plugin/health/setup.go
+++ b/plugin/health/setup.go
@@ -5,7 +5,6 @@ import (
 	"net"
 	"time"
 
-	"github.com/coredns/coredns/core/dnsserver"
 	"github.com/coredns/coredns/plugin"
 	"github.com/coredns/coredns/plugin/metrics"
 
@@ -28,32 +27,6 @@ func setup(c *caddy.Controller) error {
 	h := newHealth(addr)
 	h.lameduck = lame
 
-	c.OnStartup(func() error {
-		plugins := dnsserver.GetConfig(c).Handlers()
-		for _, p := range plugins {
-			if x, ok := p.(Healther); ok {
-				h.h = append(h.h, x)
-			}
-		}
-		return nil
-	})
-
-	c.OnStartup(func() error {
-		// Poll all middleware every second.
-		h.poll()
-		go func() {
-			for {
-				select {
-				case <-time.After(1 * time.Second):
-					h.poll()
-				case <-h.pollstop:
-					return
-				}
-			}
-		}()
-		return nil
-	})
-
 	c.OnStartup(func() error {
 		metrics.MustRegister(c, HealthDuration)
 		return nil
diff --git a/plugin/kubernetes/README.md b/plugin/kubernetes/README.md
index 552050b0b..672e167df 100644
--- a/plugin/kubernetes/README.md
+++ b/plugin/kubernetes/README.md
@@ -107,11 +107,6 @@ kubernetes [ZONES...] {
   This allows the querying pod to continue searching for the service in the search path.
   The search path could, for example, include another Kubernetes cluster.
 
-## Health
-
-This plugin implements dynamic health checking. Currently this is limited to reporting healthy when
-the API has synced.
-
 ## Examples
 
 Handle all queries in the `cluster.local` zone. Connect to Kubernetes in-cluster. Also handle all
@@ -144,7 +139,6 @@ kubernetes cluster.local {
 }
 ~~~
 
-
 ## stubDomains and upstreamNameservers
 
 Here we use the *forward* plugin to implement a stubDomain that forwards `example.local` to the nameserver `10.100.0.10:53`.
diff --git a/plugin/kubernetes/health.go b/plugin/kubernetes/health.go
deleted file mode 100644
index 243749210..000000000
--- a/plugin/kubernetes/health.go
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,4 +0,0 @@
-package kubernetes
-
-// Health implements the health.Healther interface.
-func (k *Kubernetes) Health() bool { return k.APIConn.HasSynced() }