U.S. Must Reform Health System To Remain Competitive in World, Gingrich Says
The U.S. needs to reform its health care system to remain competitive in the world, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said on Wednesday in Salt Lake City as part the Healthy Dialogues series sponsored by Intermountain Healthcare, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. According to Gingrich, founder of the Center for Health Transformation, the "current system is designed to expand to absorb the amount of money available, so the current system will be permanently underfunded." Residents must take more responsibility for their health to ensure that they live longer, healthier lives, Gingrich said.
Among other recommendations, Gingrich said that all residents should exercise for at least 30 minutes daily, that overweight residents should lose at least 10 pounds and that all students in kindergarten through grade 12 should have physical education classes daily. He said that such efforts would help reduce health care costs, with the savings used to "find a way to insure 300 million Americans." Gingrich also recommended increased use of health care information technology and incentives to promote use of best practices among health care providers. He said, "What if we were to take the worst hospitals and migrate them up to being comparable with the best? It would actually save us an enormous amount of pain, it would improve the health outcomes of the patients, and it would save a lot of money," adding, "But today we have zero mechanisms for doing this." In addition, Gingrich said that the federal government should seek to eliminate fraud in health care programs, an effort that he said could result in savings of $70 billion to $200 billion annually (Rosetta, Salt Lake Tribune, 10/30).
