Help us Obi Wan Gingrich, you're our only hope!
Democrats love to pull out the old card that the GOP just wants to oppose them and that we have nothing to offer in the debate for health-care reform. However, this is emphatically not true and I’d like to introduce you to Newt Gingrich’s health-care reform plan. Gingrich is one of the founders of the Center for Health Transformation, where you can learn more about what they propose to do to fix our health care system. There are a few key points that I think are worth discussing. Below the fold you will see Gingrich’s 6 Keys to Reforming Health-care.
1. Stop Paying the Crooks. First, we must dramatically reduce healthcare fraud within our current healthcare system. Outright fraud — criminal activity — accounts for as much as 10 percent of all healthcare spending. That is more than $200 billion every year. Medicare alone could account for as much as $40 billion a year. (Read about our latest CHT Press book, Stop Paying the Crooks, edited by Jim Frogue.)
2. Move from a Paper-based to an Electronic Health System. As it stands now, it is simply impossible to keep up with fraud in a paper-based system. An electronic system would free tens of billions of dollars to be spent on investing on the kind of modern system that will transform healthcare. In addition, it would dramatically increase our ability to eliminate costly medical errors and to accelerate the adoption of new solutions and breakthroughs.
3. Tax Reform. The savings realized through very deliberately and very systematically eliminating fraud could be used to provide tax incentives and vouchers that would help cover those Americans who currently can’t afford coverage. In addition, we need to expand tax incentives for insurance provided by small employers and the self-employed. Finally, elimination of capital gains taxes for investments in health-solution companies can greatly impact the creation advancement of new solutions that create better health at lower cost.
4. Create a Health-Based Health System. In essence, we must create a system that focuses on improving individual health. The best way to accomplish this is to find out what solutions are actually working today that save lives and save money and then design public policy to encourage their widespread adoption. For example, according to the Dartmouth Health Atlas, if the 6,000 hospitals in the country provided the same standard of care of the Intermountain or Mayo health clinics, Medicare alone would save 30 percent of total spending every year. We need to make best practices the minimum practice. We need the federal government and other healthcare stakeholders to consistently migrate to best practices that ensure quality, safety and better outcomes.
5. Reform Our Health Justice System. Currently, the U.S. civil justice system is the most expensive in the world — about double the average cost in virtually every other industrialized nation. But for all of the money spent, our civil justice system neither effectively compensates persons injured from medical negligence nor encourages the elimination of medical errors. Because physicians fear malpractice suits, defensive medicine (redundant, wasteful treatment designed to avoid lawsuits, not treat the patient) has become pervasive. CHT is developing a number of bold health-justice reforms including a “safe harbor” for physicians who followed clinical best practices in the treatment of a patient.
6. Invest in Scientific Research and Breakthroughs. We must accelerate and focus national efforts, re-engineer care delivery, and ultimately prevent diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and diabetes which are financially crippling our healthcare system.
I’m not sure if I agree with all of Newt’s proposals and ideas (read some of the rest of the website, there is some pretty good stuff there.) However, I think there are some things to take away here that Republicans need to do to offer a comprehensive opposition plan. First, I like concentrating on the private sector. Offering tax incentives and free-market approaches to encourage more efficiency and more coverage seems ideal to me. I especially like the idea of removing all capital gains tax for health-solution companies.
Newt also mentions the Health Justice System. He is right in that large tort awards leads to defensive and more expensive medicine. Certainly we want to protect consumers from negligence, but there needs to be some degree of tort reform to cap costs and cap mal-practice insurance. If the government wants to get into the insurance business, why don’t they just offer cheap, low-cost malpractice insurance to doctors, that would save billions each year. Tort reform is probably a non-start for most Democrats because the trial lawyer bar is one of the biggest Democrat voting blocs and donors out there. I actually knew a tort lawyer who was fired from his job because he once suggested on a local talk show that tort reform should be looked at.
What other suggestion would you suggest from a conservative view point? I think all of us agree that there are problems in the system, what are they and how can we fix them?
Here is video of Gingrich talking about his health reform plan:
July 27th, 2009 at 11:01 am
He left out the part where the government controls the whole thing.
The democrats will never sign on to that.
July 27th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Heh, yeah, good point. It’s always been about control and getting more people on the government dole then it has been about providing effective health-care to people for the Dems.
July 27th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
But this totally ignores and panders to the villans: the insurance companies.
Where was GOP health care reform the past eight years, when they were in the driver’s seat? What the GOP really wants to do about health care is…nothing.
So, you can X this whole thing out and replace it with NOTHING, ’cause that’s what old Newt really wants. All the rest of ‘em, too.
July 27th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Our goal should be to cover all individuals through private health insurance. We are not prepared to turn our health system over to the government. Advocate for greater transparency in both quality and price information. Place both the decision making ability and healthcare dollars in the hands of the consumer. Support the Friends of the U.S. Chamber and sign the Health Care petition at http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/takeaction/index.cfm?ID=40 .
July 27th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Why is everyone so afraid of passing a health care plan…what we have now is killing us!
The reason the Republicans are being so darn stuborn is because they want Obama to fail, they don’t give one hoot about the American people…and this “group” they keep quoting on health care is THE INSURANCE COMPANY…check it out…see where their hearts really lie!
July 27th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Well this is my plan to fix our healthcare system through capitalism. First off I would go to a Fair Tax which would allow middle class Americans the chance to take a few things out of their budget to help save money. Than I would go back to the gold standard, because inflation is a major cause of rising prices on everything including healthcare. Now granted there are other causes such as obesity and smoking, but the value of the dollar has went down 20% and the prices of healthcare have gone up 20% as well. Now I would reform medicare and medicaid to improve medicine. You can get rid of medicare very simple through alternative energy such as nuclear and geothermal. You put let us say 500$ a year into geothermal or nuclear “this also can go for social security” so when you are 65 you can receive the revenues from the sale of energy. Now this revenue will be used to purchase you the very best healthcare in the country. And let us say something happened so bad there’s no insurance that will pay for you and you don’t have the. Well the doctor is paid in full, because even after you die that nuclear or geothermal plant will still be working to pay off any medical debt. Now after your medical debt is payed off the plant will be resold and the revenues will be giving to your families or whoever you wish for them to be giving to. Now although medicaid pays the worst also medicare pays pretty bad to the doctor to. So the doctors making more money will demand less from the insurance companies so they’ll still be making more, but the price of insurance will go down do to doctors making more. Now because the government is going paying the doctors and then they get the money back from the energy. So in return for us scratching there backs they’ll at some point have to scratch ours. So do to them putting money into this system and they wont get anything till there 65 years old or have some sort of disability. The revenues that come from the plants that are built before they reach that magic number go to medicaid. Now am I saying this will make it so government doesn’t have to spend a dime on medicine no, but we certainly would spend a lot less. Now I would also use the money to raise medicaid payments. Also to avoid fraud make an audit for medicaid. Also try to make medicaid and welfare a loan, because we get some of our money back and we only do it when there back on there feet. And I would say put 50 billion dollars that were saving into medicine every year to modernize and improve medicine in a way to cut the cost of healthcare and cure disease, but please no pork.
So anyway I would really like it if people were to respond to these ideas.
July 27th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Charles, I like the idea of a fair tax, as much as I can’t really stank the Huckster, the one thing I do agree with him about is the fair tax. With that said, no way the IRS will ever be dissolved. I’d vote for any candidate, Democrat or Republican who ran on that platform.
You have a lot more faith that investing in alternate energy is going to pay off at some point. I guess I’m not willing to throw the dice on that gamble. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but how confident that the returns on it will beat the stock market?
The biggest cost in our health system right now is the aging baby-boomer population. They are going to drain SS and Medicare, we’ll be lucky if we have it when we retire. Although I plan on working until the day I die. But I like what I do.
July 27th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I really am tired of the President blaming Republicans for trying to kill health care reform. They’re just trying to kill his and the Dems idea of reform. Their plan is terrible and will really damage this country and our health care system. Republicans just want reform the right way…and they do want reform, too. I think everyone does. I think what the Repubs need to do in the media is to make it loud and clear that they have an alternative idea of what reform really is, and that they do, in fact, really want reform. I think there’s confusion regarding that.
July 28th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Bryan:
You can get geothermal and nuclear plants to become profitable just look at Mr. Burns.
July 28th, 2009 at 6:54 am
When it comes to proposal number one, there’s something each and every one of us can do about it without waiting for the government to step in or for Republicans to come back to power (hopefully this time with more motivation to act).
I don’t think I’ve ever had a health care provider in my adult life (the time that I’ve been responsible for my own care and insurance) that hasn’t been a “crook”. My eye doctor routinely tries to do things that are illegal, like require that I buy my contacts from him at around a 75% markup, or bill my vision insurance provider for services not rendered. I get free annual exam plus a fixed allowance for contact lenses, which I never completely spend. Twice now my doctor has billed the insurance company the entire allowance, so that they could conveniently keep it “on account” for me to draw from as I buy contact lenses from them.
My GP does something similar. They don’t do their own lab work, I have to get an RX from them, go to a lab to have blood drawn and tests performed which are then sent to the doctor. The idea is that the doctor has the results in hand before my exam. Lately, however, the doctor has been trying to require an office visit in order for me to get the RX for tests, and then another office visit after the results come in to discuss them with me. The one year I let them do that, they billed my insurance company for two full exams. My previous physician did the same kind of thing, and I left him over the practice. And make no mistake, this is fraud, it is stealing, and as far as I can tell most if not all of them do it.
I know this isn’t isolated because I’ve talked to other people who’ve had the same situation. But in the end, as long as the insurance company pays the bill, the patient considers it resolved and the practice continues indefinitely. If you extrapolate that one example alone to a hundred billion patients (less than half of the insured in this country), at over a hundred dollars a year each, and pretty soon you’re talking real money, paid by those “real villains” the insurance companies to doctors for services the doctors don’t provide.
Frankly the villainization of the insurance companies is a huge part of the problem here. No one thinks of a doctor screwing an insurance company as a bad thing. Most people don’t even think of the money the insurance company is using to pay the bills as their money. The current compensation system isolates the patient from the cost. Solve that and the rest of the problem is quite literally likely to solve itself. So this attitude change is key. Until patients realize that insurance companies are paying providers with the patients’ money, not the insurance companies’, neither the insurance companies nor the providers will have any reason to change, and every patient in America will end up paying $250 (and climbing) for every $125 physical exam.
So what can you do? Well, the extreme case would be to tell the insurance company that the payment is fraudulent. But that could get sticky. In the case I cited, I did in fact go to the doctor twice, and if the insurance company hadn’t paid, they could have billed me directly. Not paying could have meant a negative mark on my credit report and could even have required litigation to get the charge removed. What I do now is insist that my exam be completed in one visit. If they resist, I insist. So far they have eventually given in. They’re pissed off and it’s awkward because, incredible as it sounds, and in sharp contrast to the patients, the doctor (actually his billing staff) clearly seems to think that the insurance money belongs to them, and I’m not someone who is trying to keep them honest and make sure they get paid what they’re entitled to and nothing more, but rather someone who’s taking their money out of their pockets. But in the end, I get the proper service for the proper cost to both me and my insurance company.
July 28th, 2009 at 7:12 am
We need health care reform but not the way BO is pushing it. Why must we pass this health care bill he wants so quickly? Arrogance, EGO and greed. He is afraid of 2010 elections that’s why. I also noted that someone said baby boomers would drain the SS, could be but wouldn’t be if Congress would quit robbing it. The real question to ask though is: Will BO and congress join up for the national health care coverage that they are pushing on us.
July 28th, 2009 at 9:30 am
The insurance companies are not to blame, the cost they pay is assessed by the medical industry they only attempt to pay for the care and make a profit, an American way of life for 200 plus years. The government should put pressure on the medical industry before the insurance industry.The government should stop paying the crooks. The Obama plan won’t work because if you add 47 million more people for coverage without more doctors and nurses you will have to ration service, see Canada and Europe care. Not a good idea. Start with an aggressive policy to bring on more doctors, nurses and other medical personal. Supply and demand will help cut costs we know that from experience. No to rationing, see Canada, no to less drugs or government approval, no to government socialization of our lives.
July 28th, 2009 at 9:35 am
This is what is so confusing to me, the insurance companies get blamed by the left for all the problems in the system, yet they are spending millions to get this legislation passed, why is that? Does anyone think anything will change when the biggest proponent of change are the very people whom you think is causing the problem?
July 29th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I wonder if Newt came up with this plan for health care reform while he was having his wife sign the divorce papers while she was in the hospital dying of cancer? http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2937633&page=1 . How can you take this guy seriously? “Sorry honey I know you are battling for your life but things just aren’t working out and I’ve been cheating on you so we need to get a divorce.” Come on no wonder the Republican party has so many problems when we look to this guy for answers?
July 29th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Nice ad hominem Bob, do you have a legitimate complaint with his ideas or did you just want to take a second to bash someone?
August 13th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
[...] http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=4434 [...]
August 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
[...] thing people are forgetting is that 10% of health care expenses are criminal fraud. And unintentional errors accounts for more waste. Until that’s fixed, increasing government [...]
August 16th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
[...] thing people are forgetting is that 10% of health care expenses are criminal fraud. And unintentional errors accounts for more waste. Until that’s fixed, increasing government [...]