Health Cost Savings Backed: Gingrich Calls for National Reform
By Katie Merx, Detroit Free Press
Apr. 4–Former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich applauded a southeast Michigan effort to save lives and save dollars through collaboration, but said it is just a beginning and called for nationwide reform of the health care system.
In his keynote speech during the Greater Detroit Area Health Council’s annual Health Trends Conference on Monday in Dearborn, Gingrich called for:
* A free-market system that encourages Americans to take more responsibility for their health care. He would require Americans over a certain income level to buy health insurance or post a bond.
* Businesses and health providers to work together to create revolutionary advances in the health care system. He cited technological advances in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that came from competing businesspeople sharing ideas.
* The appointment of a federal undersecretary of commerce for health, to encourage the business of treating more people from around the world in the United States.
* Health providers and the federal government to embrace technological advances that would allow doctors and patients to access health records as well as cost and quality information in real time.
“You are as close as any region of the country at beginning to be the health system of the future,” Gingrich told about 300 conference attendees. He cited regional advances in electronic prescribing and the collaboration among industry, labor, government and the health industry to improve quality and lower costs in the region’s health system.
GDAHC, whose members include the state’s largest health systems and insurers as well as the domestic automakers and the UAW, advocates for improvement in the way health services are delivered and is in the first year of a program called Save Lives, Save Dollars intended to improve health while reducing medical spending in southeast Michigan by $500 million over three years.
“We know lives can be saved by doing better in terms of quality,” said GDAHC President and CEO Vernice Davis Anthony. “We know that rising health care costs are not sustainable. We know there is inconsistent quality performance. We know that is an opportunity for cost reduction.”
GDAHC hopes to save lives and dollars this year by increasing the use of generic drugs, improving the standard of care for heart and diabetes patients and reducing the number of hospital patients who contract surgical infections and pneumonia.
The hope is that preventing complications will not only keep people healthier but also reduce the occurrence of acute health problems and hospital costs along with it.
GDAHC believes it can reduce health spending in southeast Michigan by as much as $44 million annually by making sure diabetics get all of the recommended tests each year and get the help and medicine needed to keep their blood sugar in control.
“I am very impressed with what you have begun to do,” Gingrich said. But achieving widespread systemic change at the rate needed to save American businesses from collapsing from the enormous burden of health care costs is “going to be an enormous challenge.”
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