Here’s a question from Newt Gingrich on the op-ed page of the WSJ : What’s the big deal with spending 17% of our GDP on health care? The former speaker of the House and founder of the Center for Health Transformation calls the concern over this number and about spending too much on health care “arbitrary.” After all, he says, the system led to great innovation in the health-care space. The “new bureaucracies” and reduced payments to various medical professionals and industry stakeholders that have been proposed as part of an overhaul to reduce health-care spending will

destroy this innovation. He agrees that some basic health reform is necessary — though he doesn’t say what or how — but that it should be achieved through “maximizing patient choice and freeing health-care providers.” Rather than starting with the goal of reducing health-care spending as a percentage of GDP, the focus should be on allowing patients and doctors to make their own choices though expanded health savings accounts and letting patients buy insurance across state lines, for example.

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Concerns Over High U.S. Health Care Costs ‘Arbitrary,’ Says Gingrich