The government should pay for providers to have electronic medical records, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Tuesday.

Gingrich, who spoke at the National Managed Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C., said as the largest healthcare payer, the U.S. government had a vested interest in paying for such technology.

"It's clear that the Bush administration is not going to pay for EMRs," said Gingrich, who called the decision unfortunate.

He also warned that without a wired healthcare system, many lives could be lost if the United States is hit with a global flu pandemic.

In lieu of the government paying for physicians to adopt technology, Gingrich called for regulators to modify the Stark and Anti-Kickback laws, which some say create a legal barrier to healthcare IT adoption. In addition, the government should require electronic prescribing in federal healthcare programs. He said the largest healthcare IT vendors to agree to standards that would make systems better able to communicate.

Gingrich, who leads the Center for Health Transformation, outlined his vision for a healthcare system in which patients would have access to price and quality information on medications, much the way travel Web sites provide pricing information for flights.

Gingrich, who repeated his mantra that "paper kills," has been an outspoken proponent of using IT to cure a variety of ills in the healthcare system. Last year, he pushed for the government to make its "Welcome to Medicare" physicals electronic, a battle he said he lost.