LANSING – The health care system of Michigan as well as the entire nation needs to be completely restructured to focus first on individual wellness practices, social structures that reinforce individual practices and the infrastructure of the health care system, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the Senate Health Policy Committee. After doing that, then officials can look at the cost factors of health care, he said, and they may be surprised that savings can be realized.
Politicians and journalists only want to look at the cost of health care, Gingrich said, and then never look at anything else. But states that have tried employing new statewide systems for providing health care, especially for Medicaid populations, have found themselves spending more than they anticipated because those states did not oversee changes to their health care systems.
In making the changes to the health system, Gingrich said, states and the federal government may need to look at changing the budgeting system for health care to expand it beyond a one-year budget. One-year budgets are too limited in terms of looking at overall changes and results, he said.
The current health care system is “stunningly destructive”, Gingrich said several times during his testimony, leading to thousands of needless deaths and treatment procedures that could be avoided if individuals were encouraged to take better care of their health and hospitals improved overall operations.
The need to make these changes is dictated in large measure because the world is undergoing the most massive economic downturn in 80 years, Gingrich said.
And to reporters Gingrich said, “For us to be the most prosperous nation, we must be the most productive nation. And to be the most productive our workers have to be healthy.”
Director of the Center for Health Transformation, Gingrich said greater efforts have to be made to get individuals to be more proactive in their own health care, in an effort to avoid diseases and to manage chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma.
For example, Gingrich said he backs requirements that K-12 students have daily physical education to build a habit of exercise and minimize obesity. School lunch and breakfast programs should be looked at as well, he said.
Basics of how to reach individuals to manage their health conditions have to be re-thought, Gingrich said. In Georgia, for example, researchers found that poor, black men would not have their blood pressures taken by women in a clinic setting. So the researchers trained barbers to take blood pressures, he said.
States may also want to look at paying poor, pregnant teens to get pre-natal care and follow their physician recommendations, he said. Doing so could help cut down on the incidence of pre-term deliveries, requiring neonatal care and a greater likelihood of special education, all of which would be far more expensive than paying the young women to get care early on, he said.
Individual actions have to backed, however, by cultural and societal changes, Gingrich said. For example, it is no good to tell poor families to eat a healthier diet if no grocery stores are nearby that sell fruits and vegetables, Gingrich said. He suggested that tax breaks should be offered to encourage grocery stores to open in lower-income areas.
Or governments should rethink food stamps, to provide more money in order for families to purchase fresh produce, he said.
The state last year enacted legislation to allow for food stamps to be issued twice a month, in order to help families buy fresh fruits and vegetables, but the newly enacted federal farm bill outlaws food stamps being issued more than once a month.
In terms of health care delivery, Gingrich said if the worst performing hospitals were brought up to the level of the best performing hospitals as many as 150,000 lives a year would be saved. Hospitals should be compelled to disclose such things as their infection rates, Gingrich said.
A major effort also has to be made to tackle fraud in Medicaid and Medicare, which could total as much as $120 billion, Gingrich said. To do that will require using electronic health records, he said, adding, “You cannot catch crooks with paper records.”
Gingrich said he also wanted to work with the administration of President Barack Obama to help write an inclusive, well-designed health care plan. If the focus on the part of the administration is “to write a narrowly-centered” plan that focuses on the federal role Mr. Gingrich said the Obama proposal would fail as did the proposal of former President Bill Clinton in 1993-94.
This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com
a>>
