Hear that giant sucking sound? That’s the crunch of American healthcare costs sucking the life’s blood from the U.S. economy, and it could very well become the number-one issue in the upcoming presidential campaign of 2008.
Certainly nuclear proliferation isn’t the issue, when more nations than the federal government cares to admit already had hydrogen weaponry before the U.S. began using it as an excuse to invade them. Nor is the ongoing Iraqi war the central issue any longer, because for better or worse, America’s involvement will be over with within a few years’ time.
But now that nominees of America’s major political parties are campaigning in earnest for the presidency, it will soon become painfully evident that soaring healthcare cost is the biggest problem America faces.
Therefore, when Newt Gingrich, former Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, addressed the MedImpact Healthcare Systems’ annual conference titled “CHOICES 2006” March 2-4 at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, the Village News was there to meet with him for this exclusive inside story.
After Speaker Gingrich retired from Congress, he went on to found the Center for Health Transformation in 2003, a national organization dedicated to the discovery and implementation of new medical breakthroughs that will save lives and save money for all Americans. Just three years later, it has become the largest organization in the healthcare industry, with MedImpact HealthCare Systems a founding charter member.
MedImpact caters to all sectors of the health industry with 90-day drug benefit and disease management programs for consumers, benefit and cost management programs for pharmacies, and online reporting systems for physicians and businesses to access medical data.
So Gingrich’s keynote address at the MedImpact Convention gave him a chance to diagnose America’s healthcare problems and take on even greater challenges.
His presentation on “Smart Choices to Deliver Health Transformation” to the convention’s 700-plus managed care executives, pharmacists, clinicians and other health experts was literally a storm warning ” 15 percent of today’s economy is tied up in healthcare, and Washington bureaucracy can’t possibly stop its rising cost from reaching disaster level, which is quickly approaching.
The last time Gingrich issued such a dire proclamation to the country it was over federal budget deficits of the 1990s that he said would bankrupt America’s children and grandchildren. His solution was to balance the federal budget in a proposal he called a Social Contract with America. And he actually made good on the deal with the first balanced federal budget in more than 70 years.
Now Gingrich is offering to come to America’s rescue again with what he calls a new “Social Contract for 21st Century America,” one he says will require Americans to adopt a “21st century approach to citizenship.”
“Well, the essence of it is that we think all 300 million Americans ought to have health insurance, and that we think that health has to be re-centered in three ways,” he said. “First, it should be based on the individual, over their lifetime, rather than the providers. Second, it should be based on prevention, wellness and early-testing, rather than waiting until people need acute care, and third, it should be electronically connected without paper so that you have all of the advantages of the modern information age.”
But with this new 21st-century approach to citizenship comes a new degree of responsibility for Americans. For example, if in the year 2010 a person decides that some preventative measures are necessary to avoid serious medical problems later in life, where would that person go and to whom would he or she talk?
“I think you’re always going to need advice from doctors and advice from nurses and other health professionals,” Gingrich said. “But I think that you’ll see people have dramatically more health information. They’ll be able to do a lot of testing at home on things like diabetes, or arthritis, or a range of things. I think you’ll see a lot more self-information, just as you see in other aspects of life today. “
Some politicians claim senior citizens don’t really want more choice, that they’re flustered with the array of choices now and aren’t capable of deciding what’s best for their health. But Gingrich disagreed.
“How is it possible that Walmart, with 28,000 consumer goods to choose from, is the number-one retail store in the world, if seniors are truly afraid of choice?” he asked. “Think of the rise of Home Depot, and the ability of people to go out and get all sorts of tools that will let them work around the house ” that wasn’t possible 30 or 40 years ago, or certainly much more difficult.
“I think you’re going to have the rise of those kinds of helpful systems that enable people to manage their chronic illness, or enable people to make informed choices about dealing with their cancer, or enable people to understand, ‘Where’s the best place for me to get my particular cardiovascular problem taken care of.'”
But even if every citizen succeeds in taking more responsibility for his or her healthcare in the future, how will that prevent American federal bureaucrats from doing what they do best in years to come? What are the odds that America can ever rebalance the federal budget in the face of baby-boom retirement and the attendant massive rising of healthcare costs?
“Look, if you transform the healthcare system so that you get to a much better system with much better prevention with a lot more choices, and people having a lot greater involvement in taking care of their own health, I see no reason you can’t balance the budget over say, a seven-year period, which is what we did in the ’90s,” Gingrich said. “But I think that you have to understand that you’ll never balance the budget if you don’t transform the health system, because if it just keeps getting more and more expensive, as the largest single cost-driver in the federal government, it makes it impossible to balance the budget.
“That’s part of why I went into creating the Center for Health Transformation because I knew for us to get back to a balanced budget, we had to do big things with health.”
So next year, when the politics get fast and furious, pundits predict a lot of talk from both Republicans and Democrats about federally funded, universal health insurance for all Americans.
New York Senator Hillary Clinton, the probable Democrat presidential nominee and coordinator of a failed healthcare plan when her husband Bill was president, certainly will make health insurance one of her key campaign promises if and when she chooses to run.
But, only one possible candidate will honestly be able to proclaim him or herself a proven hands-on expert in both vital issues.
So will Gingrich run?

Sobering statistics from Gngrich’s keynote address:
First the Bad News
Last year, the U.S. government spent $610 billion dollars on healthcare, or 24.7 percent of the overall federal budget. Expenditures went to cover the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, FEHBP (Federal Employee’s Health Benefits Program), Veteran’s Medical Care and “Tri-Care” (Defense Health Program).
Next year, the United States will be spending more on military healthcare costs than on military weaponry.
By 2011, civilian healthcare costs alone (Medicare, Medicaid and FEHBP) will pose the greatest single burden upon the federal budget, beating out the entire defense budget by a projected $68 billion. Overall healthcare costs are expected to jump from $610 billion to $910 billion, or 28.1 percent of the federal budget.

Now the Good News
Every American citizen is likely to have a national electronic health record by the end of this decade, which will save incalculable time and money. This feat could actually be accomplished in just six weeks, if there were no other priorities to consider.
Free Web sites are already stepping up to provide vital on-line health information, such as hospitals listed by procedure, and pharmaceutical suppliers within a 5-mile radius, along with their prices on various drugs and percentage of potential savings compared with average market rates. Florida Governor Jeb Bush has already made this service available statewide.
More scientists are alive today and currently working on serious problems than in all of history combined.
We should be able to eliminate cancer by 2015 to 2020. This is Gingrich’s personal prediction.
The sheer volume of new and useful technical information that is expected to accumulate between now and the year 2031 will be equal to all the data the human civilization accumulated between the years 1880 and 2006.
For additional information visit www.gingrich.com.
Figures courtesy OMB, FY 2007 Budget