Health Care's Unlikely Surgeon (Gingrich) -NYT

[Rose Siding]

snip>
He advocates applying the principles of the "ownership society" to medicine, notably health savings accounts and consumer-directed health care. The idea is to give individuals tax breaks to assume the responsibility for paying more of their own medical costs and to rely less on the government and insurers. Market forces, supporters have said, will bring more options, lower prices and higher quality to health care, as they have done for other categories of goods and services.

Critics fear that such policies risk magnifying the problems of a costly American health care system that now leaves 45 million people uninsured.

"The danger here is that all you're doing is creating incentives for rich, healthy people to break away from poor, sick people," said David Cutler, a health economist at Harvard. "You end up penalizing sick people, making their insurance more expensive and harder to obtain. That may just increase the burden on community hospitals, states and the federal government."

Mr. Gingrich disagrees, saying he sees a historic opportunity to transform the American health system and make health care policy a conservative issue. Republicans, he said, have traditionally been portrayed as the bad guys who want to curb entitlement spending and thus limit care. So conservatives, he added, have tended to surrender health policy to the Democrats. Mr. Gingrich says the arrangement is beginning to change because of Republicans like President Bush and Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader.

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/16/business/yourmoney/16newt.html

Four pages in the Sunday paper. He's had a policy operation, Center for Health Transformation, on K Street for over a year and some sort of health care group before that within the Gingrich Group. He's prepped for this.

[Fovea]

1. Market forces?

What free market?
There is no free market in medicine, nor has there been since the 19th century. Civilized nations realize that this is for the best.

[Zenlitened]

5. Do these lunatics have any idea what a society is FOR?

What a bunch of sickos.

[jdj]

11. good point, but they believe in autocracy.

as long as they are the ones on top.

the rest of us should just be toothless peasants running around barefoot with pleuresy and consumption.

[Warpy]

7. Young, healthy people opt out of the system

leaving older and sicker people to pay premiums. Narrowing the pool like that always drives rates up.

Health insurance has got to be mandatory and universal.

Young, healthy people think they're always going to be young and healthy. That wonderful feeling of immortality ends during the thirties for most of us and by then it's too late. The next crop of twenty somethings are making the same stupid decision to opt out of insurance, leaving us to pay higher premiums.

Illness is not a consumer decision. Health insurance does NOT belong in the for profit marketplace.

[jdj]

12. is this even feasible? are there really enough rich people

to keep the health insurers fat and rich without employers offering health insurance?

[bluestateguy]

2. Gingrich is a relic from the 90's

He is irrelevant now. He will not be nominated by the Republican Party for President. I see no need to waste my time paying attention to him.

[Rose Siding]

4. Patrick Kennedy is working with him now on health tech legislation

"The Republicans run the show, so Newt Gingrich has a better handle on how to proceed," Mr. Kennedy said.

And I really don't like to think about it, but this doesn't sound irrelevant to me:

snip>
Mr. Gingrich's stature, and his connections in Washington at a time when Republicans control the White House and Congress, help explain the growth of his health business. In June 2003, Van R. Johnson, chief executive of Sutter Health, a large nonprofit doctor and hospital group in California, was in Washington to meet with administration officials. Mr. Johnson and members of his board were there to discuss health policy issues, especially programs using information technology to improve the quality of care.

Over lunch, Cesar V. Conda, then an assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for domestic policy, asked Mr. Johnson if he knew that Mr. Gingrich was advising the administration on health technology. "No, I didn't realize he was involved," Mr. Johnson recalled replying.

The White House referral led to a lengthy meeting with Mr. Gingrich in September 2003. Mr. Johnson was impressed, and Sutter joined the Center for Health Transformation.
............

That's not all. Another prominent Times article tomorrow notes that states again are bristling over just the kind of things Gingrich used to grab power the first time...

snip>
Ten years after Newt Gingrich's Republican revolutionaries won control of the House under the banner of states' rights, states across the country are again complaining about the heavy heel of federal authority on everything from taxes to tort law to education to the environment.

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/16/weekinreview/16dao.html

I keep thinking about how I didn't believe that we'd get drawn into another senseless guerilla war, either.

[reprobate]

9. The next guerrilla war will be here, if they take away health insurance.

It would be interesting to see the public's reaction were the repugs to allow corporations to drop health insurance.

The public's stress levels are way up there now. I just wonder what would happen if the average person suddenly found his family with no health insurance, only a 'health options account' to contribute to each month. Particularly since most people don't have enough disposable income to contribute to anything.

These republicans see that they have no leashes any longer. Dems can do nothing to stop them, so they will gallop into history as the conservative executioners of the American social contract. I say let them have their head and do whatever they want to. It will guarantee that they will be turned into irrelevancy. And perhaps they will experience some separation anxiety. Separation from their heads at the hands of the public executioners.

Let's see. They are destroying education. Social Security. The military. Health care. The economy. What's left? They'll have to find something quickly or have nothing to do but collect their corporate payoffs.

Bastards.

[physioex]

10. Perphaps he is working on a plan....

Where he can get Viagra so can continue his escapades.

[papau]

3. Save Health Ins by ending Health Ins? - just save some money?

So what prevents a health problem from meaning the destruction of the financial life of a person under Newt's "plan"?

[Rose Siding]

6. Oh, he's all heart

...explaining why people would take better care of their health if they had to pay more of their own medical bills, he said: "No one washes a rental car. We have turned our health care system into a rental car."

Um...I'm not renting my BODY.

[liberalhistorian]

19. Well, he of the

pot belly and double chin should talk about "taking better care of yourself."

[liberalhistorian]

17. There are already plenty of people

suffering the destruction of their financial life because of a health problem. This will just add millions more, not that he gives a shit as long as he's got his.

[Straight Shooter]

8. Paving the way for employers to eliminate health care for employees

because soon we'll see elimination of tax credit to employers who do provide health insurance.

These people are really tempting fate, they truly are. There will come a point in time when even the gods cannot help them. Wait until someone's spouse dies for lack of health care, and just see if there won't be a day of reckoning for people like Gingrich.

[jdj]

13. He'd just say why didn't you divorce her while she was in the hospital

like I did?

[liberalhistorian]

18. People's spouses are already

dying for lack of health care, and they're still voting repuke, so what makes you think that would change anything? They'll just find new ways to blame Dems and liberals.

[UpInArms]

14. Snewt the toadying lobbyist

ROFLMAO!

This windbag is so full of shit.

Wonder if he picked up his dying wife's hospital bill - oh yeah right, that was when he served her with divorce papers.

I crap bigger than he is.

[liberalhistorian]

16. Actually, his wife had

just had cancer surgery when Mr. Family Values Morality served her with divorce papers in the hospital. She didn't die, but that didn't make it any less sickening and disgusting. Not that that would have stopped him, mind you.

[UpInArms]

20. glad to know that she survived her cancer

and her malignant ex-husband.

[liberalhistorian]

15. Well, I have no health insurance

right now, but never fear, 'Ol Newtie to the rescue and he'll fix everything! Oh, boy, I feel ever so much better and much more hopeful now! :mad: :mad: :mad: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[depakid]

21. This article is very disturbing on many levels

First of all, it's clear from the outset that this is little more than a cheerleading piece- the way the "reporter," Steve Lohr, uncritically fawns over Gingrich makes one wonder whether he's been promised or expects some quid pro quo for submitting this piece. A professional PR firm would have difficulty submitting better copy.

It also creates the absolutely false impression that Gingrich has any serious credibility among actual health policy experts- which, I'm here to tell you he doesn't. In 2 1/2 years of a Masters of Public health program, rarely have I ever heard his name mentioned or seen it in print- except in derision. If I were to show this article to any of my professors, they'd roll their eyes... probably in disgust.

Gingrich is a 1st class sophist- not someone who "understands the complexities" for the purpose of improving the American health care system. He LIES using the principles of rhetoric to further his twisted agenda- though I'll grant you that he's quite adept at it.

Even though Mr. Lohr is seemingly uninterested in putting forth an honest and critical piece- you do see some clues:

Base camp for Mr. Gingrich's health policy work is his Center for Health Transformation, a for-profit organization that occupies new office space overlooking K Street, the main street for Washington lobbyists.

Translation: he's a high priced lobbiest.

his dogmatic belief in free-market health care

Translation- all of his pronouncements in the article about preventative care, epidemics of obesity and diabetes, and the healthcare information systems are just for show. So called "free market" conditions and lassiex faire economics are precisely what has led to and perpetuates these problems.

With respect to IT integration, it's America's unwillingness to enact uniform standards that's kept us from having integrated clinical information systems that can "talk to one another." Aside from leading to major inefficiencies this is also one of the larger sources of preventable medical errors.

If one cared to look- they'd see that, with respect to diabetes, for example, it's been freeware and collaborative registries- not the so called "free market" that Gingrich actually champions, that have led to gains in reporting and best practices in the states.

In Europe, thanks to years of developing and requiring common standards- instant, anytime, anywhere access to electronic health records is fast becoming the rule, not the exception. In the US, under Gingrich and the Republican's proprietary approach, that may not happen even in the next decade- if even then.

The long and short of it is that once again, a NY Times reporter has shortchanged his readers, lauded yet another far right charletan with undeserved credibility- and in the process, helped thwart those of us who honestly work, sometimes for little pay, to improve America's dysfunctional health care system.

</rant>

[papau]

23. Well said! :-)

:-)

[Rose Siding]

25. It gets worse

Another piece from today's Times, with a heavy op/analysis slant, is about state angst over federal power -like when Gingrich sold his schtick in the 90's. Once the Fed is built up again as the enemy (even though it's pure REPUB already!), Gingrich is in the same position as last time!

Red, Blue and Angry All Over

Ten years after Newt Gingrich's Republican revolutionaries won control of the House under the banner of states' rights, states across the country are again complaining about the heavy heel of federal authority on everything from taxes to tort law to education to the environment.
...
Even as Republicans have begun marking the 10th anniversary of the "Contract With America," which called for ending so-called unfunded mandates, the conference estimates that the federal government has fallen $25 billion short in fiscal year 2005 in paying for the requirements it imposes on state and local governments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/weekinreview/16dao.html?pagewanted=2&oref=login

I'm betting Fox viewers are going to be seeing a great deal more of this huckster's puss over the next three years.

[depakid]

26. That article just goes to show

That Republicans have no integrity whatsoever- they have no respect for law, doctrine or traditions (like comity) or for ethics.

You can see the in the reversals on federalism, with their stance on the balanced budget (remember the clamour for a balanced budget Amendment?) or term limits (which they thought was a great idea, until it applied to them). And that's just to name a few. It's a well defined pattern with them.

While the occasional Republican has seemed "uncomfortable" with the hypocrisy- I haven't seen them switch their party registrations over the repeated betrayal of principles.

I see that as serious character flaw- perhaps even a pathology.

Clearly, there's something wrong with these people.

[pookieblue]

22. a bunch of evil trolls they are....

explaining why people would take better care of their health if they had to pay more of their own medical bills, he said: "No one washes a rental car. We have turned our health care system into a rental car."



Says a man who left his first wife when she had cancer and his second after she was dx'd with MS.

It's all about putting more money in the pockets of the rich and taking it from the ones who need it most.

He wouldn't know how much medical bills cost! There is no way that blue collar could afford the plans they have in store. I guess they just want all the disabled or sick poor people to go off and die somewhere.

sorry for the rant.

[papau]

24. Why does our media not point out the evil - are they all on the payroll?

:-(