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Healthcare reform costs were buried in Stimulus Bill By Rizzuto Thu Jul 30, 2009 - In a move that was almost certainly meant to lessen the sticker shock of the healthcare reform bill, the White House pulled a sleight of hand by burying billions of dollars in the costs of healthcare reform in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Page 58, line 5 of the Health Care reform Bill empowers the government to create a system which would: “enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service and…to include whether the individual is eligible for a specific service with a specific physician at a specific facility, which may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card”What this provision is referring to is the creation and deployment of new electronic medical record technology. President Obama has been touting this technology as a key to reforming the medical industry since the early days of his presidential candidacy, implying that with its implementation, the healthcare industry could potentially save billions by safeguarding against medical errors, and reducing malpractice lawsuits. Luckily, an entire office within the department of Health and Human Services was set up explicitly for the purpose of overseeing the advancement of medical IT, but it was done so in the Stimulus Bill rather than the Healthcare. Section 3001 of the Stimulus bill establishes the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The charge of this newly established office according to the bill is, “the development of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure that allows for the electronic use and exchange of information.” This is not exactly a feat that can be accomplished on a shoe string budget. In total, a full 49 pages of the stimulus bill are dedicated to the development, testing, and implementation of this new nationwide infrastructure. That represents over 10% of the total content of the 400+ page bill, and billions of dollars in costs that are today being overlooked when we debate reform. The reason I can’t pinpoint the precise number of billions is because the appropriation for the new infrastructure is very vague. The bill reads “there is authorized to be appropriated such sums as may be necessary for each of the fiscal years 2009 through 2013.’ In other words, as much as it takes. Essentially, the White House and Congressional Democrats used the financial crisis as cover for a down payment on healthcare reform. Until the costs that were deferred to the stimulus bill are included in the debate, we won’t know the true price tag healthcare reform. One thing is for sure though, the current estimate being batted around by congressional Democrats and the President, over 900 Billion dollars including “concessions” given to the Blue Dog Democrats, is misleading and falls far short of the true cost. In the end, the sleight of hand pulled by Democrats casts more doubt on the idea that the stimulus bill was anything more than a way for the left to fund its agenda.
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