Thursday, August 17
Gainesville Civic Center
Registration 8:30 a.m. – Conference 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
The Health Care Conference is open to the public. Cost is $25 per person and includes a light breakfast and lunch, vendor booths and door prizes. Reservations: Katie Davis, 770-532-6206 or e-mail: katie@ghcc.com
FEATURING
Speaker Newt Gingrich
Former Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives and Founder of the Center for Health Transformation
Congressman Nathan Deal
Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health
Mike Whitney
Flexible Benefits Group
Newt Gingrich is former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and Founder of the Center for Health Transformation. A highly sought-after public speaker and world-renowned strategist, Gingrich served as a Member of Congress for 20 years and as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999. Widely recognized for his commitment to a better system of health for all Americans, Mr. Gingrich’s leadership helped save Medicare from bankruptcy, prompted FDA reform to help the seriously ill and initiated a new focus on research, prevention, and wellness. Gingrich’s contributions have been so great that the American Diabetes Association awarded him their highest non-medical award and the March of Dimes named him their 1995 Citizen of the Year. Today, he serves as a Board Member of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.
In his book, Saving Lives and Saving Money, Mr. Gingrich describes his vision of a 21st Century System of Health and Healthcare that is centered on the individual, prevention focused, knowledge intense, and innovation rich. Moreover, he makes the case for a market-mediated system that will improve choice and quality while driving down costs. To foster such a modern system that provides better outcomes at lower cost, Mr. Gingrich launched the Center for Health Transformation. The Center for Health Transformation is a collaboration of transformational leaders dedicated to the creation of a 21st century intelligent health system in which knowledge saves lives and saves money for all Americans. www.healthtransformation.com
U.S. Congressman Nathan Deal
Representative Nathan Deal was first elected to Congress in 1992 and serves the people of the 10th Congressional District of Georgia. As the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, Nathan has been a staunch advocate for increased quality and efficiency in our healthcare delivery system because he believes we can improve outcomes for patients while eliminating inefficiencies which cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Nathan and his wife, Sandra, are the primary caregivers for his 99- year-old mother. This experience has led him to become a leading advocate for long-term health care reform. Nathan was instrumental in the development and passage of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 as well as many other key pieces of legislation. He considers his leadership on reforming the Medicaid program to be his signature achievement, thus far, as subcommittee chairman. During the remainder of the 109th Congress, he looks forward to working closely with Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton to pass much-needed reform legislation for the National Institutes of Health and the Medicare program. www.house.gov/deal/
Mike Whitney
Flexible Benefits Group
Flexible Benefit Group specializes in designing and providing administrative services to employers who sponsor cafeteria plans for their employees.
Whitney’s topic for the conference is the state of group health insurance, particularly as it exists in the small business world. He will discuss some reasons why so many small group plans have been experiencing double digit inflation and describe some of the techniques that are being used to make it possible for those plans to survive.
One of the methods Whitney will focus on is the new Health Savings Accounts (HSA). The HSA, coupled with a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) was introduced by Congress in 2003. In the two years the HSA/HDHP has been in existence, it has gained great acceptance and is generally conceded to be one of the dominant benefit plans of the 21st Century.
Whitney’s presentation will give an overview of the HSA/HDHP including reasons why it will help control costs while allowing participating employees to increase their overall benefit values. By using real world examples, he will illustrate the actual impact of an employer shifting to the HSA/HDHP design without destroying employee morale. And, he will show how this shift will permit employers to set benefit budgets AND live with those budgets, for the foreseeable future.
While the tools Whitney will describe are focused on smaller employers, they have equal or greater application in the larger employer universe. In either case, the ability to reduce inflation to an acceptable level while altering employee behavior to control plans costs will have a long lasting impact on the firm’s long term profitability. www.flexiblebenefitgroup.com
The Health Care Conference is open to the public. Cost is $25 per person and includes a light breakfast and lunch, vendor booths and door prizes. Reservations: Katie Davis, 770-532-6206 or e-mail: katie@ghcc.com