Wednesday, Mississippi State University welcomed former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt as guest speaker for its annual Insurance Day program.
MSU First Lady Rhonda Keenum opened the program by introducing the guest speaker and giving a short biography.
Leavitt began his career in a family-run insurance business and became chief executive of the Leavitt Group, which is now the nation’s second largest privately held insurance brokerage. He was served as the 14th governor of Utah from 1992-2004.
In 2004, Leavitt was chosen by former President George W. Bush to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
In 2007, he was the first cabinet-level blogger in United States history, Keenum said.
Leavitt began his lecture by talking about what he considers two significant changes he believes are occurring in our country and in the world.
“I would call these ‘game changers,'” Leavitt said. “[These are] things that are affecting the entire economy of almost every country.”
“They were doing things that I thought were just counterintuitive,” Leavitt said.
One point was the government was trying to roll back constitutionally-protected pensions and then trying to raise taxes by reforming their tax system. He said what made this counterintuitive was government officials were doing it in the context of a national election.
In about 1900, Leavitt said the United States and Argentina vied to be the second largest economy in the world.  The U.S. capitalist system, has become the most important economic power in history.
Argentina made three very important mistakes, which caused it to lose its chance at the number two spot. The first mistake was political figures decided to obtain power and keep it. To do this, they gave people pensions and protected them in the constitution so no future politicians could roll them back easily.
Its second mistake was they continued doing it. Finally, their third mistake was not changing after many people warned them against it.
“What I was seeing was not political courage,” Leavitt said. “It was an economic imperative that was forced upon the people of Argentina from outside their political structure. I would refer to that today as a global economic dispassion.”
The people could not stand their government’s actions, so they began to take action. This led to Argentina having five presidents within five months. Its government began to print more money, which led to 5,000 percent inflation.
“They had no credibility in the world,” Leavitt said.
From here, he switched his view to the United States. In 2008, the nation was in the middle of a banking meltdown.
“We now have a $1.5 trillion deficit in our country, and we now have a $12 to $13 trillion debt,” Leavitt said.
To get the U.S. out of debt, someone has to bet on the dollar as a good investment. In order to sell it now, the U.S. is selling it to its people.
“We are falling into a significant pattern that history has warned,” Leavitt said. “History is a very important teacher.”
He then turned to the subject of health care.
“I would like to suggest to you that the health care debate is not the main event. The main event is economic reform, and health care is a symptom of that process,” Leavitt said.
After he gave his lecture, Leavitt opened the floor for discussion. This brought up the subject of Medicaid. Under the newly implemented health care plan, more people will begin turning to Medicaid, which means state dollars will go more toward Medicaid than other things, including education.
“Health care is essentially run by an unlimited number of general contractors, and no one’s in charge to actually deliver a specific price for a product at a specific quality,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt said health care is all individual charges with no one coordinating, and everyone has an incentive to do nothing but more. He said in his opinion, the Fee for Service incentive is at the heart of all of these problems.
“I believe this subject represents the current generation’s challenge and opportunity to demonstrate that they are worthy to be called the greatest nation on the Earth,” Leavitt said.