Former House Speaker Gingrich Says Democrats Will Not Overhaul Health Care

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Tuesday said before an audience of hospital executives that Democrats in Congress will not be able to overhaul the U.S. health care system if they are successful in the fall elections, CQ HealthBeat reports. Gingrich is the founder of the Center for Health Transformation.

Gingrich said, "On health policy, we are partly blocked down because on the House side, the two senior health people are" Energy and Commerce Committee Chair John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chair Pete Stark (D-Calif.). Dingell is "a smart guy," but health care "is not a topic he has thought about much," according to Gingrich. He added that Stark, who represents the California district that includes San Francisco, "has a perfectly San Francisco attitude towards profits and towards the economy, which is that he doesn't understand why either of those is necessary and that a nice government-run bureaucracy could take care of all this." Gingrich said House members will "discover that a Dingell-Stark model of the world is not sustainable."

Gingrich also said, "Those are the two guys ... plus [former House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.)] who killed" the national health care system developed by then-first lady and current Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.). He noted that Republican leaders were willing to "cut a deal" then, but the Democrats said, "We'll never bring it up for a vote" because "[w]e would rather lose on the issue and keep talking about it than have a compromise."

Both Dingell and Stark declined to comment on Gingrich's statements.

Gingrich also said "there is no evidence yet" of either Clinton or presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) or John McCain (R-Ariz.) running an issue-oriented campaign (Reichard, CQ HealthBeat, 4/8).