Gingrich: Republicans have 'zero' health care ideas

Thanks to everyone for your responses.

We are supposed to have “think tanks” for conservatives...they “brilliantly” developed Obamacare/Romneycare. It is the “conservative” alternative to the Left’s communist single payer where “private” medical industry could still exist (what was left of it). I believe it was the Heritage Foundation that screwed the Nation on this little fascist (bi-partisan) number. So clever. Not. It was seen by the communists as a great leap forward and more power to murder their thought enemies in the name of health care cost reduction and behavioral/thought control of the collective.

Former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich reprimanded his fellow Republicans in unusually harsh terms Wednesday, blaming GOP members of Congress for developing "zero" alternatives to President Obama's health care reform law.

Here's a simple alternative: recognize that much of the regulatory, Medicare, and insurance infrastructure absorbs huge amounts of money, but does very little to increase the supply of medical care nor ensure that medical resources are given to those who would value them the most. The extent to which people value something is perhaps best measured by what they would be willing to give up to get it. While that may not be perfect as a measure of valuation, it has a huge (and under-appreciated) advantage over most others: those who put themselves in a position of needing the scarcest resources will be punished by having to pay highly for those resources, while those who can avoid needing to use the scarcest resources (e.g. by finding less-scarce alternatives) will be rewarded by not having to spend so much. Rewarding those who can find alternatives to scarce resources will likely do more to prevent resources from becoming exceptionally scarce than could any plausible program of subsidies.

Another thing which conservatives need to point out is that because of the patent system in this country, new technologies (including medical treatments and drugs) which initially benefit only the very wealthy generally become available to almost everyone within a few decades. Those who want the hottest new technologies will have to pay for their research and development, while those who are willing to wait will get the benefits of that work, relatively speaking, for free. If those who want to get the hottest new technologies before everyone else must pay dearly for the privilege, enough people may pay a high enough premium to fund further research and development. It is this ability to reward their benefactors with early access to new technologies which allows companies to attract the research funds necessary for further development. While some people may not like the fact that new-technologies products and services are initially scarce, it is only because of such initial scarcity that the products exist in the first place.

Also, people should be asked which they would prefer: to go into a store and see a mixture of some products they could afford today, some products they might aspire to, and some that they'd like to have but could probably never afford, or to go and see only things that everyone could readily afford to buy? Whether or not a person benefits from seeing the store's offering of things he'll probably never be able to afford, most people like to have the chance to work toward things they can't afford yet. Offering the latter opportunity to people of widely-varied economic status means that the store will have many products that many people won't afford, but it is in many cases the ability to sell such products to those people who can afford them that will allow the store to make any products available to anyone.

How about this Newt: The federal Govt shouldn’t have ANY ideas concerning health care because health care should be left up to the states and to the private sector.