Newt Gingrich has put long-term care (LTC) in the headlines during the closing days of the Republican presidential Iowa caucus campaign.
Republicans in Iowa are set to go to caucuses, or meetings, to vote on contenders for the GOP nomination Tuesday.
Gingrich, the former House speaker, talked about LTC while he was meeting with a group for mothers in Des Moines, Iowa. Frank Luntz, a pollster, asked Gingrich about his mother, Kathleen Gingrich, who died in 2003. Gingrich talked about how his mother ended up in an LTC facility because of a combination of mental illness and physical ailments.
Gingrich wept as he answered and said his mother's experience had introduced him to the issue of quality long-term care, according to press reports.
The combination of terms "Newt Gingrich," "tears" and "long-term care" now has appeared on news sites on theWeb about 26,000 times in the past week, according to Google News.
Many of the articles have the headline, "Newt Gingrich Tears Up Talking About His Mother,"
Gingrich notes on his campaign website that he has been the co-chairman of the National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care and the congressional Alzheimer's Disease Study Group.
Elsewhere on his campaign website, he contends that one of many reasons to push for repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) is a passage that seeks to give the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) more authority over use of prescription drugs.
The passage gives the HHS secretary the ability to decide what drugs seniors can use and the ability to micro-manage how doctors and nurses dispense drugs in LTC facilities, Gingrich says.
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