OPINION:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may or may not be confirmed by the Senate as secretary of health and human services.
He has had a long and complicated life. It was shaped in part by the assassinations of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Imagine your uncle was killed when you were 9 years old and you were immersed in a week of televised anguish as the entire nation mourned his death. Then imagine your father was killed five years later and you had to live through another wave of heartbreak.
Understandably, some aspects of Robert F. Kennedy’s background are messy.
Yet he is an extraordinary, charismatic figure who has done a great service for America by reigniting a fundamental debate about how to make America healthy again.
In 2003, I wrote a book with Anne Woodbury called “Saving Lives and Saving Money.” The title was designed to communicate an important point. First, you must save lives — then you can save money. I argued that health is a moral issue and money is secondary.
Tragically, the system has evolved in the opposite direction. An analysis of the current system would aptly be titled “Follow the Money.” Doctors are subordinated to bureaucrats. Patients are subordinated to rules and regulations. The consolidation of hospitals, doctor groups, the insurance system, pharmacy benefit managers and other aspects of the health care system have raised costs, lowered focus on patients, and made the system more ossified and unmanageable.
Health care lobbyists spend more money in Washington than giant defense corporations (an estimated $750 million yearly in health-related lobbying).
Health care reform has been focused on policy symptoms rather than the core challenges of the profoundly misfocused and ill-designed system for the last 50 years.
Politicians have prioritized reforming insurance and finance. Those are not health care. Even focusing on health care in its current state is a mistake because health care is not health. Today, we have a sick care system, not a health care system.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s great contribution has reminded us that we care about health. We want Americans to have the longest possible lives and the best possible health. We want to achieve this with a convenient, affordable system that helps us when we become ill or have an accident requiring medical attention.
More than any other public figure, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has raised the larger issue of the sick care system’s failure. America spends more on sick care, and Americans have gotten sicker. Our lifespans have become shorter after centuries of growth because our health care system is so unhealthy.
If we stop focusing on insurance and sick care and instead focus on what sustains health and long life, we will get dramatic results. The population will be healthier, and the system will be less expensive. We will save lives and money.
Exciting evidence suggests that new knowledge about the human body could lead to dramatically longer and healthier lives.
Dr. Mike Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic estimates that, with the right approaches, the average 20-year-old today should be able to live to 115 — with the vigor and health of a 60-year-old. We work with the Alliance for Longevity Initiatives, which advocates rethinking chronic disease management. Developing the biology necessary for chronic disease avoidance could make people healthier and easily create the biggest potential savings in health care costs.
If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can launch a meaningful national focus on health rather than sickness — and prevention rather than treatment — he will spur one of the great revolutions we need to make America healthy again.
Every citizen should contact their senators and demand Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation. Our lives, health and finances will all improve if he can lead a national debate and force change in our deeply broken health care system.
• For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingirch360.com. Also, subscribe to the “Newt’s World” podcast.
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