Gingrich was invited to speak at the Wilson School by former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist ’74, who introduced his fellow Republican and reminded the audience that Gingrich had been a history professor before his election to the House of Representatives and was used to giving lectures.
Gingrich began with a sweeping condemnation of the current healthcare system, bemoaning its inefficiencies.
Specifically, he faulted the healthcare industry for being too slow to switch to efficient technologies.
“In the average doctor’s office, when a UPS person walks in, they double the amount of technology in that office,” he said.
While most businesses are moving toward computer records, government healthcare still relies on paper, Gingrich said.
“Paper prescription leads to 8,000 people a year dying,” Gingrich said, adding that a hospital in Georgia switched to computer prescription entry and reduced medication error by 93 percent.
Gingrich said that rather than replacing inefficient systems, the government is instead sinking more money into them. After Hurricane Katrina, over a million people lost their medical records and “The reaction of the federal government was not to pay for a new electronic system but to go back and pay for paper records again,” he said. “That is utterly, mindlessly stupid.”
Gingrich used UPS as an example to distinguish between the effectiveness of private industry and the inefficiencies of government bureaucracy.
“UPS tracks fifteen million packages a day,” Gingrich said. “Over here at the Department of Homeland Security, we can’t find between 15 and 20 million illegal immigrants when they’re standing still.” Gingrich joked that the government should send them each a package through UPS to figure out where they are.
Gingrich also criticized the healthcare system for focusing on people who are already sick rather than addressing Americans’ lifestyle issues in time to prevent illnesses, adding that preventative care for diseases like diabetes could save a lot of money.
“If you have a child who is 12, 13, or 14 and is overweight and under-exercised,” he said, “do we have the right to suggest to you that that child needs to go on a diet and exercise?”
Gingrich also argued that cultural factors are key to understanding both health and economics.
“You show me a very poor neighborhood, and I’ll show you a neighborhood with a bad culture,” Gingrich said, adding that ealth problems in some neighborhoods “may look like they’re health problems, but they’re really cultural problems.”
For example, “if you see fetal alcohol syndrome in an Indian reservation, that’s a cultural problem,” he said.
Another problematic facet of the public healthcare system is fraud, Gingrich said. He noted that some pizza parlors in Florida register themselves as HIV clinics and receive government money for services that they never perform.
“It’s estimated that there is more than a billion dollars of fraud in HIV/AIDS testing in South Florida alone,” Gingrich said.
An efficient healthcare system would incorporate new technology, address lifestyle issues, attempt to effect cultural change and address fraud, Gingrich said, adding that he is in favor of a “multiple-payer system” that would allow Americans to choose between health care plans.
Asher Hildebrand, a graduate student in the Wilson School, said after the lecture that he disagreed with Gingrich’s statement that poverty and poor health have cultural roots.
“Whether or not you disagree with him, he’s a smart man who presents his ideas in a humorous manner,” he added.
Bryan Bunch ’09 called the lecture “brilliant and refreshing” and said he supports Gingrich for a presidential run in 2012.
“The message of personal responsibility along with less government interference and unnecessary regulation is one that needs to be heard across America,” he said.
The lecture was co-sponsored by the College Republicans and the Wilson School.
“It was great for a Princeton club that Gingrich could come and spend the afternoon with us,” College Republicans president Andrew Malcolm ’09 said.
— Matt Westmoreland contributed reporting.
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