The
transcript of Glenn Beck’s interview with Newt Gingrich is
remarkable because Beck asks Gingrich a number of different policy
questions, which Gingrich answers without any apparent concern for
establishing his conservative credentials. He even fails to clearly
separate his own views on the individual mandate for health care
insurance from those of Obama — a distinction that one would think
he would be quick to make, given Mitt Romney’s health care
troubles. The transcript can be confusing, but here’s the relevant
part:
GLENN: All right. Well, and I think this is where we
fundamentally differ is it seems to me ‑‑ and let me just play the
audio here ‑‑ that you are for the individual mandate for
healthcare and you have been for quite some time. Let’s play the
audio.
GINGRICH: I am for people, individuals, exactly like automobile
insurance, individuals having health insurance and being required
to have health insurance, and I am prepared to vote for a voucher
system which will give individuals on a sliding scale a government
subsidy so it will ensure that everyone as individuals have health
insurance.
GLENN: Okay. That’s 1993. Here is May 2011.
GINGRICH: All of a sudden responsibility to help pay for
healthcare. And I think that there are ways to do it that make most
libertarians relatively happy. I’ve said consistently we ought to
have some requirement to either have health insurance or you post a
bond or in some way you indicate you are going to be held
accountable.
VOICE: That is the individual mandate, is it not?
GINGRICH: It’s a variation on it.
GLENN: Here’s about Paul Ryan trying to fix Medicare.
GINGRICH: I don’t think rightwing social engineering is any more
desirable than leftwing social engineering. I don’t think imposing
radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a
free society to operate. So there are things you can do to improve
Medicare.
VOICE: But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting which is completely
changing Medicare?
GINGRICH: I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you
want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better
outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you
suddenly impose upon. I don’t want ‑‑ I’m against ObamaCare which
is imposing radical change and I would be against a conservative
imposing radical change.
GLENN: Okay. Yet you seem to always be ‑‑ this is long‑term
individual mandate stuff. You seem to be very interested in the
government finding the solution.
GINGRICH: Well, let’s go back to what I just said. What I was
asked was if a program is unpopular, should the Republicans impose
it anyway. We can go back and we can listen to exactly what I was
asked on that show and what I said I stand by, which is in a free
society, you don’t elect officials to impose on you things that you
disagree with. We just went through this slide over ObamaCare.
Now, I also, ironically, I would implement the Medicare reforms
that Paul Ryan wants, I would implement them next year as an
optional choice and I would allow people to have the option to
choose premium support and then have freedom to negotiate with
their doctor or their hospital in a way that would increase their
ability to manage costs without being involved, you know ‑‑ but I
wouldn’t impose it on everybody across the board. I think that’s a
very large scale experiment. But I think you could migrate people
toward it. I’m proposing the same thing on Social Security. I think
young people ought to have the right to choose a personal Social
Security insurance savings account plan and the Social Security
actuary estimates that 95% of young people would pick a personal
Social Security savings account over the current system but they
would do so voluntarily because we would empower them to make a
choice. We wouldn’t impose it on them. That’s a question of how do
you think you can get this country to move more rapidly toward
reform, and I think you can get it to move toward reform
faster.
GLENN: All right.
GINGRICH: By giving people the right to choose.
In this and other parts of the interview, Gingrich doesn’t seem
to realize or care that the issues he’s discussing are hot-button
topics among conservatives.
