On May 13, Speaker Newt Gingrich and PBS corre-spondent
Susan Dentzer spoke to an audience of 2,500 in the
Elmen Center on the topic of the current crisis in health care
in America. The timeliness of their presentations, giving a
clearer understanding of the issues involved in achieving
high-quality, affordable health and long-term care for
Americans, is underscored by a recent Kaiser Foundation
survey that reported that health care is the greatest concern
of Americans—above all other issues.
Mr. Gingrich, whose new book Saving Lives and Saving
Money was published on the eve of his appearance here, has
long been committed to a better system of health care for
this country. His leadership helped to save Medicare from
bankruptcy, prompted FDA reform to help the seriously ill,
and led him to direct a research team’s lengthy study of ways
to bring significant improvement to health care in the 21st
century. Among the key strategies Mr. Gingrich presented to
the Boe Forum audience were the following:
Increase patient knowledge, choice and control
Improve access by all to quality care
Foster innovation and improvement in health and health
care, and
Find ways to improve the value of health care and lower
overall costs
Among Gingrich’s most specific proposals were to
make available electronically to each person his or her com-plete
medical record, and to increase speed, accuracy, and
economy by carrying all prescriptions electronically and by
making drugs available competitively on-line.
The Center for Western Studies Newsletter
Before the Thirty-fifth Annual Dakota Conference con-cluded
on Saturday evening with an address by Stephanie
Herseth, president of the South Dakota Farmers Union
Foundation, on ensuring the future of family farming, near-ly
230 participants from 15 states had met to examine the
cultural, demographic, and economic change on the prairie
and other topics of regional interest. Over the two days of
the conference, April 25-26, more than 85 papers were pre-sented
in 34 sessions.
The conference theme “The Prairie in Transformation”
was inspired by the writings of Joseph Amato, founder of the
Center for Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest State
University. In his address at the Friday dinner, Amato deliv-ered
a rousing call to rethink our writing of local and region-al
history. Rural historian and author of two books on Laura
Ingalls Wilder, John E. Miller (SDSU) spoke at Saturday’s
luncheon on the way our perception of the prairie is influ-enced
by the creative collaboration between Laura Ingalls
Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane in the writing of
the Little House stories.
Seeking to attract more young scholars to the confer-ence,
the Dakota Conference moved in 2003 from late May
to late April. In so doing, the conference returned to its tra-ditional
time. The Dakota History Conference, as it was
known during the years it was sponsored by Dakota State
University, was first held in February 1969. The following
year, it moved to April, where it remained until 1990, when
CWS began sponsoring the conference with support from
the South Dakota Humanities Council.
Prairie Region Examined at Dakota Conference
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Vol. 23 Number 2 SUMMER 2003
Eighth Boe Forum Addresses Health Care
President Bruce Halverson, Susan Dentzer, Board Chairman
Gerry Berger Law and Newt Gingrich