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Gingrich plans to address health care in visit to island

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With debate surrounding Gov. Mark Sanford's proposed Medicaid reform heating up, and Medicare's prescription drug benefit on the horizon, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is scheduled to make a whirlwind visit to Hilton Head Island next week to give his take on how to improve the country's health care system.

Gingrich will headline a Medicare and Medicaid forum hosted by state Rep. Richard Chalk, R-Hilton Head, on Oct. 12, and U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., will hold a Town Hall meeting a day later to discuss the nation's changing health-care packages with residents.

Both events are free and open to the public.

Gingrich's visit to Hilton Head is part of a public relations blitz by the former House speaker, who has been crisscrossing the eastern United States this summer, trying to build grassroots support for national health-care reform.

"We're trying to establish a positive dialogue about what we can do about the state of health care," Gingrich said in an interview Tuesday. "We need a very large-scale change, here, and this is an opportunity to share those thoughts and ideas in South Carolina."

He also is scheduled to speak at Furman University in Greenville later that evening.

Gingrich, who is a founder of the Center for Health Transformation, a Washington-based health-care reform advocacy group, said he'd speak for about an hour about what the nation can do to improve and overhaul the health system and Medicaid.

He will take questions from audience members following the speech.

Gingrich also threw in his support for Sanford's Medicaid reform proposal and urged President Bush to issue a waiver to South Carolina.

Under Sanford's proposal, the state and federal program that provides essential health-care benefits to the poor would be dramatically transformed -- no longer providing unlimited care, instead setting up fixed-benefit personal health accounts.

"I think it's a very good proposal, and one which I hope the Bush administration will approve here in Washington," he said. "Any proposal that gives beneficiaries an economic incentive to use health dollars wisely is a good idea."

Gingrich, who vowed to focus 40 percent of his time on health-care issues when he stepped down as Speaker of the House in 1998, has proposed a nationwide program to deal with diabetes and obesity, the implementation of "intelligent health systems" and a goal to eliminate the need for cancer treatments by 2015.

"I'm trying to make the case as a teacher-citizen that these are very important ideas and that we should be changing things and not just putting up with it," Gingrich said.

He admitted his goals are lofty, but said they're still attainable.

"Health is the biggest single program we have in the economy, and also one of our biggest problems," he said. "We need a solution equal to the size of the problem."

Chalk said he has wanted for Gingrich to speak in the area for some time, and said Gingrich agreed to do the forum this fall free of charge, as long as he was able to speak about health-care reform, particularly Medicaid.

Following Gingrich, Robert Kerr, director of the state Department of Health and Human Services, will present the proposed Medicaid reform program, which he helped Sanford draft.

The plan is attracting attention nationally and has raised many questions locally.

"There seems to be a lot of confusion on the issues, and hopefully this forum will help give people additional information," Chalk said.

Buddy Lingle, associate professor at the University of South Carolina's School of Pharmacy, will talk about Medicare Part D, the new prescription drug benefit that begins Jan. 1 for those who sign up by Dec. 1.

With the drug benefit program's sign-up start date of Nov. 15 closing in, Lingle will walk consumers through the program's benefits and application process.