There is a scene in the movie “Wayne’s World,” in which Wayne and Garth saunter into a back-stage party held by rocker Alice Cooper and his band. In the presence of their idol, they fall prostrate on the floor, bleating, “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”
That’s how I felt last night attending a fund-raising party hosted by Dottie and John Cox for the benefit of the Virginia Political Action PAC with Newt Gingrich as the star attraction. Gingrich is the monarch of wonks, the overlord of oracles, the paladin of pundits. He propounds a vision of fiscal conservatism, government transformation and creative market solutions to social problems — very much the same philosophy espoused by Bacon’s Rebellion. But he’s been at it longer, and he’s seized a national stage and reached the highest pinnacles of power.
VPAC gave me three or four minutes with the Great One before he addressed the small crowd. (Tyler Whitley writes a solid account of the event in the Times-Dispatch.) My question: What can Virginians do to reform health care?
A lot. Gingrich raised three main points.
First, Virginians can help citizens take responsibility for their own health. Often that’s as simple as making sure they exercise and eat nutritious food. Twelve-year-old children are at risk of diabetes because their diets are so poor and they are so inactive. How do we re-shape the food stamp program, Gringrich asks rhetorically. How do we re-shape urban grocery stores? How do we get five-day-a-week physical education back into the schools?
Second, Virginians should have the right to know the price and quality of doctors, hospitals, drugs and medical devices. “This stuff should be out in the open. We should create a real market in which you have the information and you get to make the decision.” Consumer-driven health care, Gingrich asserts, could drive 20 percent to 40 percent of the costs out of the health care system.
Third, create a simple, online health care system that competes with the current system. “I can insure a family of four in Iowa for $3,300. The same family costs $14,300 in New Jersey,” he says. “It takes three times as much to insure a family of four in Maine as it does in New Hampshire.”
What’s the difference? Politics, and what Gingrich calls “health pork” enacted into legislation at the behest of special interest groups. In Virginia that means mandated health benefits… licensure for medical professionals… and Certificate of Public Need that restricts competition between hospitals and medical facilities — “all sorts of devices designed to protect the entrenched status quo at the expense of the individual citizen.”
You can see the Gingrich interview here on the VCAP website. And you can find out more about health transformation at the Center for Health Transformation.
What’s especially encouraging is that there is considerable common ground between Gingrich and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who wants citizens to take more responsibility for their own health care, and to make health care markets more transparent. The political conditions are right to make a big difference in Virginia.
