WWL-TV

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich pitched his ideas for health care reform Wednesday to Gov. Bobby Jindal and health care officials as the Jindal administration looks to overhaul Louisiana's system of treating the poor and uninsured.

The Jindal administration wants to shift much of Louisiana's state-provided health care to more of an HMO-like system where patients have more options to choose where they receive care. The specific details of the plan have yet to be released.

"Louisiana's got to dream big," Jindal said. "It's not going to be good enough to just tinker around with the edges for reform."

Because the state's massive health care system is funded largely with federal money, any changes would require federal approval and state legislative approval, which Jindal hopes to get before the Bush administration leaves office.

"Absolutely, it would be our first preference to get this done before they leave, simply because whoever's president, there will be a transition period and it can take months for a new team to come into place, examine the concepts, and we simply don't want to have to start over from scratch," Jindal said.

Gingrich, founder of a health policy organization called Center for Health Transformation, spoke at a health care conference Wednesday afternoon. Later, he spoke to a meeting of the governor's cabinet and staff.

At the health care event, Gingrich outlined some general principles that he backs: mandatory physical education for students in grades kindergarten through 12, five days a week; requirements that all school lunches be healthy enough for diabetics to eat them; and changing bus routes so that children within a mile of their school campuses walk to school.

Jindal said he supports efforts to improve diet and exercise. He didn't specifically back Gingrich's recommendations, but the governor said he has started talking to state lawmakers about legislation that would improve nutrition standards in the state.

Jindal also said he supports increasing physical education classes in schools, but he said he wants to talk with school administrators about the details.

Gingrich also backed a mandatory national system of electronic health care records, a multibillion dollar computer upgrade that Gingrich wants subsidized by the federal government and put in place by December 2012. He said moving to a paperless system would save taxpayers billions of dollars in fraudulent claims and abuse and would more than cover its costs after a few years. He wouldn't estimate what the electronic medical record system would cost.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)