Saving Lives & Saving Money:  Transforming Health and Healthcare

Preface by William D. Novelli, AARP Executive Director and CEO

Writing about health and health care is a big job. Writing about transforming the entire American healthcare system is even more daunting. In Saving Lives and Saving Money, Newt Gingrich has done an admirable job of both. He has clearly and comprehensively described the problems with our current healthcare system, explained why it cannot continue to stagger along, and most importantly, offered his own ideas about how to transform our current mess into a 21st century system that saves lives and money.

Gingrich believes that our healthcare system is beyond reform…that it needs to be transformed into something totally different than it is today. “Reforming,” Newt says, is the process of trying to make the current pattern work. “Transforming” is about developing new and very different patterns.

Volumes have been written about the problems with our healthcare system, and hundreds (if not thousands) of conferences are held every year with experts discussing how addressing a specific piece of the problem will improve the system. Yet, with all the talking and tinkering, costs continue to rise while quality care continues to decrease.

Newt Gingrich has never been one to tinker. He is a big idea person, and moreover, he has the ability to link big ideas into something even larger still. He believes it is time to focus the healthcare debate where it truly belongs–on people’s health. That is what Gingrich does in Saving Lives and Saving Money. The gap between the health and healthcare we should have and what we actually have is appallingly huge, and will only get larger if we don’t transform the system. And, in the process of improving our health, the nation can also save billions of dollars if we make substantial changes in the way we practice health and health care. Gingrich is proposing nothing less than dramatically changing one of the largest segments of our economy. His ideas for transforming the system are not academic theories. They are based on real-life examples of entrepreneurial changes people are making across the healthcare system throughout the country, and he offers specific examples to back up his claims and allow people to find out more.

Transformation of America’s healthcare system is one of the biggest challenges facing our nation. In 2011, the first members of the 76 million baby boomer generation will begin turning 65. This will have a dramatic and lasting impact on our health-care system simply because older people tend to use healthcare more. Transformation does not happen overnight. As Gingrich points out, it took us twenty years to transform our welfare system. We don’t have twenty years to get our healthcare system in order. We have to start work on it now.

Newt’s ideas are influencing how we at AARP are thinking about our national role in health promotion and disease prevention and in our advocating for system change. He writes: “The healthcare debate is not about Democrats and Republicans. It’s not about liberals and conservatives. The health debate is about your life and the lives of your family. The healthcare debate is about your money and your family’s money.” I would only add, it’s also about your future…and America’s.

Whatever your views and your state of health, you will find Saving Lives and Saving Money bold, enlightening, and provocative. While you may not agree with all of Gingrich’s ideas, this book will engage you in thinking about – and probably acting on – health and healthcare. That’s important, because as he observes, transforming our nation’s healthcare system will take all of us to make it happen. And, indeed, it must happen. Our health, our families, and our futures depend on it.