Come meet the Newest Newt. We know Newt Gingrich as author of “The Contract With America.” He led the first Republican sweep of the House in 40 years in 1994. After leaving Congress in 1999, Gingrich re-cast himself as a military historian with best-selling Civil War novels “Gettysburg,” (St. Martin’s Press, 2002) and “Grant Comes East,” (St. Martin’s Press, 2004).

And now, Mr. Gingrich takes up arms in today’s biggest business battle: the $1.6 trillion health care horror.

“HMOs were all about money, not health,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Health is a moral issue. It only makes sense to make your health yours.”

For Mr. Gingrich, founder of the Center for Health Transformation (www.healthtransformation.org)and author of “Saving Lives & Saving Money” (Alexis de Toqueville Foundation, 2003), health care is an “antelope issue.” (“Antelope,” as in, lions only hunt antelopes because small animals like chipmunks are too small to bother with.)

Antelope issue, indeed. Look at the numbers. Carmakers say that up to $1,700 of the price of every new car is the cost of employee health care.

Health costs are rising an average of 18% a year for the 172 million Americans covered by health insurance plans. Desperate employers are cutting coverage and shifting costs to employees, forcing employees to strike, boycott, and defect to get access to health coverage.

For Mr. Gingrich, affordable health care is an issue that transcends partisan politics. Recently at Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s health care conference, Mr. Gingrich shared the podium with Senator Schumer.

Mr. Gingrich has also reached out to New York Senator Clinton, whose own 1994-95 efforts in health care reform he opposed. Today, Ms. Clinton backs Mr. Gingrich’s call for a Personal Health Record.

An ideal solution, Mr. Gingrich says, is a Consumer-Driven Health Plan, or CDHP. A CDHP matches a Health Savings Account (HSA), which is like a 401(k) for health care, with a high-deductible insurance plan.

Employees and employers put, say, $2000 pretax in the HSA to cover the health deductible, then pay a small premium for high-deductible health insurance to provide catastrophic coverage.

This combination saves employers and employees 15% to 30% over the cost of traditional PPO coverage. Then add online comparisons of doctor and treatment prices and quality ratings, and health care becomes a lower-cost, higher-quality consumer market.

Mr. Gingrich uses diabetes as an example of how to transform health with proper incentives and information.

“Diabetes counts for every seventh dollar of health spending in this country,” said the former speaker. “But no doctor or nurse can take care of a diabetic. The diabetic has to take care of him or herself. An information-rich incentive-based plan pushes patients to learn how to take care of themselves. If we can postpone the onset of blindness or heart disease by helping a diabetic care for himself, we have improved his quality of life and saved money at the same time.”

“In the third-party payer (HMO or PPO) model, health is a rental car – it’s nobody’s problem,” the Mr. Gingrich said. “Nobody has ever washed a rental car.”

“The first step in creating a successful consumer-directed health plan is to get everyone to relate to incentives,” he said. HSAs give consumers their own pretax cash to buy healthcare, which creates an incentive to be a good shopper. What is more, the HSA money is portable from job to job. Consumers can also transfer unused HSA balances to a pretax retirement account such as an IRA.

The second step, said Mr. Gingrich, “Is a Travelocity-style data supermarket of drug and care options with pricing information.”

Comparison-shopping is critical to creating self-reliance, he observes.

The third is wellness programs, preventative check-ups and disease management incentives. Mr. Gingrich uses himself as an example. “My doctor has me on the South Beach Diet,” says the Speaker, who at 61 looks fit and claims to have shed 10 pounds since his days in Congress. “I substitute wine for beer, except when I visit Ireland.”

Mr. Gingrich is optimistic about his approach. “The CDHP adoption curve will be similar to that of 401(k)’s,” predicts Mr. Gingrich. After six years, 7.54 million people owned 401(k)s, and in 2000, after 32 years on the market, 42.1 million owned 401(k) funds. Today, barely 1 year after the IRS introduced the HSA account, CDHPs claim 1 million participants. The former speaker may have caught another antelope.