Fact Sheet: Obama vs. Gingrich on Healthcare (by ContraSuggest)

For years, Newt supported the individual mandate that would require, under penalty of a fine, all citizens to purchase some form of health care insurance.  It was a stupid thing to have advocated, but he has publically admitted that it was a mistake and has since changed his position.  Rick Santorum, who happens to be a very good conservative candidate, greatly exaggerates when he points out that Newt’s former stance on individual mandate would preclude him from effectively critiquing Obamacare.  Newt was one of the leaders in the fight to stop Obamacare’s predecessor: Hillarycare.  The health care proposals put forth by Gingrich in the past have been consistent, with the sole exception of individual mandate; the rest of the measures that he called for were designed to empower the free-market, not the federal government, which is the antithesis of Obamacare.  I have bulleted out the main points below so readers can decide for themselves.  Newt has never supported any of the other disastrous measures that make up Obamacare, such as:

• The creation of at least two-dozen new bureaucratic, taxing and regulating offices, councils, groups, and programs
• Gauging “comparative effectiveness,” which will bring about rationing, ill-health, and in some cases, death
• Trillions of dollars worth of tax increases on nearly every aspect of the health care industry; costs that will either be paid by or passed onto consumers
• A $500 billion cut in Medicare
• Total exclusion of medical malpractice reform
• A legislative pogrom against insurance companies
• Bribes, payoffs and threats to coerce legislators into voting for a bill that the public did not support; dirty machine politics on an order of magnitude that was shocking (even by sleazy Washington standards!)

Gingrich offers these solutions, absent the individual mandate:

• Elimination of waste and fraud that costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars per year.  Medicare fraud is largely enabled by the current paper-based system of billing and record keeping; implementation of electronic third-party liability verification and payment would save billions.  Similarly, as 90% of all medical claims are paid by printing paper checks that are delivered by mail, transitioning to electronic payment would save an estimated $11 billion a year       
• Reform the bureaucratic disaster that is the FDA by streamlining the process of approving new drugs and treatments by relying on true scientific applications rather than endless analysis via bureaucratic red tape
• Extending the same favorable tax treatment enjoyed by those covered under employer provided plans to individuals who purchase their own health insurance
• Encourage health plan portability and competition in the free-market by repealing the laws that prevent insurance companies from doing business across state lines
• Allow small businesses to band together and form associations, enabling them to purchase less expensive employee insurance plans
• Give taxpayers access to the healthcare data (not privileged patient information) that their money has allowed the government to compile, allowing them to be better-educated, healthier consumers
• Encourage preventative rather than acute care by reforming the Medicare doctor reimbursement equation.  Currently, doctors only get paid for office visits; not, for instance, counseling patients via phone or e-mail regarding healthy behavior, how to lower their drug costs, or how to comparison cost shop online
• Encourage a private-sector-led best-practice initiative that educates the health care industry regarding documented, evidence-based best practices that work and will promote massive cost savings
• Empower states to better manage their Medicaid programs, because they better understand the health care needs of their citizens than do Washington pols