Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson today outlined a plan to save the nation's convoluted health care system.

Thompson, speaking this morning at the annual fall sales conference of the Wisconsin Association of Health Underwriters at Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel, said the nation needs to change its health system because its costs are projected to double between now and 2013 if no changes are enacted.

"We are spending $2 trillion per year on health care," Thompson said. "That's 16 percent of our gross domestic product on health care. Between 2006 and 2013, that figure will rise from $2 trillion to $4 trillion, or from 16 percent to 20 percent of our GDP."

Medicare will "go broke" in 2013, when the agency will spend all of the money it takes in and "IOUs" from the US Treasury will be due, Thompson said.

Potential solutions such as price controls, government controls and raising taxes are not viable, Thompson said.

"That's why I want push for a change in the health care system," he said. "I think our system is the best in the world, and it's up to us to do something to change it. Congress is not going to do anything about in the next two years – it's too divided."

Thompson's suggested solutions include:

- Placing higher emphasis on preventative care, because 95 percent of health care dollars are spent on "treating people who are sick," he said.

- Encouraging employers to bring in nutritionists to meet with employees, and starting workplace-sponsored exercise programs, particularly to decrease the occurrence of adult-onset Type 2 diabetes.

- Better usage of prescribed drugs and better patient monitoring to ensure they're taking the drugs prescribed to them. About 27 percent of Americans do not take the medicine prescribed to them by doctors, Thompson said, and about 70 percent of senior citizens in need of immediate medical care need it because they've stopped taking prescribed drugs or have taken the wrong medicine.

- Improve the use of information technology in the health care world. About 98,000 patients died in the last year because of medical mistakes, Thompson said. Of those patients, about half died because they were given "the wrong medicine at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount or to the wrong person," he said. Information technology should also be expanded to allow transparency for medical records, so that patients from out of town can easily have medical records accessed in an emergency room setting. "Electronic medical records could save millions or billions of dollars," Thompson said.

- Require states to create systems to insure approximately 45 million Americans who have no health insurance now. "Most of them are going to the emergency room now, so why not be smart about it and set up a system to cover everybody?" Thompson said. "The beauty of it is that everybody would get insurance, and they could go to clinics for their shots (instead of using the emergency room). Instead of a determent to the economy, it could spur the economy."

Health care reform and energy sources will likely be the center of debate in the 2008 presidential election, Thompson said, because those are the two most pressing issues in the country now.