Gingrich: Focus on behavior to reform health care system

Lansing, Mich. —- The first step in lowering health care costs and insuring all Americans is getting people to change their behavior, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich told lawmakers here Wednesday.

The Republican —- who represented Georgia’s 6th District in the north Atlanta suburbs when he was in the House for two decades and guided the “Contract with America” effort in 1994 that helped the GOP sweep Congress —- endorsed the carrot over the stick, saying he would pay pregnant teens to take prenatal vitamins and go to the doctor regularly so the government avoids astronomical bills when babies end up in neonatal intensive care units.

His other ideas include paying teens who don’t get pregnant and stay in school; requiring exercise for schoolchildren; giving tax breaks to grocery stores that open in the inner city; giving bonuses to food stamp recipients who buy fruits and vegetables; and making students walk to school if they live close enough.

“You’ve got to start with the individual,” Gingrich told the Senate Health Policy Committee.

He said politicians and the media focus too much on the finances of health care. Policymakers instead should pay more attention to individual behaviors, cultural challenges and how care is delivered, he said.

“If all you do is focus on how to finance the current system, you will go broke,” Gingrich said. “So you’ve got to start with how to fix the current system. The current system is stunningly wasteful. It has bad outcomes. It kills people unnecessarily.”

He backed the use of electronic medical records to reduce the duplication of tests and cases of Medicaid and Medicare fraud. He said government should budget differently so long-term savings from spending money up front on prevention can be seen. He also criticized the difference in quality among doctors and hospitals.

“We just tolerate this extraordinary gap in productivity that we would never tolerate say in aviation,” Gingrich said.

Health Policy Chairman Tom George invited Gingrich to speak to the committee after Gingrich called him last week. Gingrich founded the Center for Health Transformation and has spoken with officials in other states about health care reform.

George, a practicing physician and Republican from Kalamazoo County’s Texas Township, said Gingrich’s testimony reinforced and dovetailed with what legislators have been exploring.

Bills are being introduced that would make students take physical education earlier than high school.

George has pushed legislation under which Medicaid patients would pay less for services if they exercise regularly and don’t smoke. But on Wednesday he stopped short of supporting payments to people in exchange for healthy lifestyles. “The question is what incentives work and what behavior changes give you results?” he asked.