Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. spoke at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center on Friday as part of the Health Care Policy Grand Rounds hosted during each election cycle. Addressing an auditorium filled with health care providers, researchers and other DHMC affiliates, Gingrich spoke about his beliefs on decentralizing health care and furthering brain research.
To introduce his health care platform, Gingrich drew an analogy with the history of flight.
“In the turn of the last century, there were two parallel efforts to invent flight in the United States,” he said. “One was by the Smithsonian, which had a $50,000 grant from the Congress. And the other was by two bicycle mechanics in Dayton, Ohio, who as a passion, privately had decided they wanted to learn how to fly.”
Gingrich said the Smithsonian was unsuccessful in its efforts, yet the Wright Brothers — two men without advanced degrees or government grants — invented what the Smithsonian had failed to.
“Great innovation is decentralized, semi-spontaneous, led by unique people doing unique things,” he said. “Large bureaucratic centralized systems are inherently control-originated and inherently unwilling to take unique risks.”
Gingrich said the bureaucracy surrounding American health care policy would crush innovation and at its best, achieve adequate generalized patient care. He also said broad government recommendations based on statistical data — like recent recommendations to bypass select prostate cancer screenings — undermine doctors’ capacity to provide personalized care.
“I think it is very dangerous to start taking something as personal as health and start abstracting it into random bureaucratic averages based on statistical analysis,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich said health care must be “reinvented and rethought from the ground up.” He specifically emphasized his support for continued brain science research in hopes of finding cures and developing treatments to minimize autism, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other mental health disorders.
“These are all stunningly expensive problems,” he said. “I am passionate that we take brain science as an opportunity seriously. There is no single investment that would do more to save lives and more to save money than an extraordinary commitment to brain science.”
Following his speech, Gingrich opened the discussion up to questions from the audience. Meg Curtis of Hillsborough, N.H., whose husband died of Alzheimer’s last year, asked Gingrich to elaborate about his views on brain research.
“Five years ago my young husband at age 59 was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s,” she said. “I promised him at that time I would keep him home until the end and that I would not have my voice silenced until we could find a cure.”
Curtis asked Gingrich if he would increase federal support for brain research.
Gingrich said he favored redesigning the current stance on research, taking it “off budget” and creating a public-private partnership to aggressively research cures and methods of postponing the effects of Alzheimer’s and mental health disorders.
“If you had a system designed to maximize the production of new American science and technology and to bring it to market as rapidly as possible, you would literally dominate the world health market with new products and solutions,” Gingrich said. “You have a long-term win-win strategy — people would get to be healthier long, they would be less expensive to the taxpayer and you are you are creating more jobs.”
Curtis said she had posed her question to former Gov. Jon Huntsman, R-Utah, and former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass. at forums earlier this week. Both candidates seemed surprised by her question, but Gingrich brought up the issue of brain science before she even asked, she said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Previously an undecided voter with health care, and specifically support for brain science, as an important concern, Curtis said she was pleased with what Gingrich had to say.
“It was extremely favorable,” she said. “I’m really swinging toward the Gingrich way of thinking.”
Not all members of the audience were equally pleased with Gingrich’s presentation. Peter Merrill, director of information systems at DHMC, questioned Gingrich about his role in the current gridlock in government during the question and answer session, but in an interview with The Dartmouth said he was not swayed by Gingrich’s response.
“I thought it was an incredibly articulate and well-reasoned defense of his actions in response to my characterization of him as responsible for the current gridlock in government,” Merrill said. “It was in no way an answer to my question of how to get past the current gridlock. My personal belief is that he is one of the major people responsible.”
Although not entirely pleased with many of United States President Barack Obama’s decisions regarding protection of personal liberties and the War on Terror, Merrill said he will probably vote for Obama again in the general election.
“I suspect he may be the only choice,” he said. “It will depend on who Republican voters come up with.”
Huntsman spoke at DHMC as part of the Health Care Policy Grand Rounds on Jan. 3.