The economic stimulus package under consideration in the Senate includes $3 billion more for health IT than the House's package, according to a summary the Senate Appropriations Committee released Friday, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The summary indicates that the Senate Appropriations Committee proposal would allocate $5 billion for health IT, but the summary does not specify how the funds would be spent.
In addition, the Senate Finance Committee has included $18 billion for health IT efforts in the part of the stimulus package over which the committee has jurisdiction.
In comparison, the House's package calls for spending $20 billion on health IT (Yoest, Wall Street Journal, 1/24).
Job Creation
Beyond improvements to health care delivery, President Obama's transition team has argued that health IT spending in the proposed stimulus package would create jobs.
A study by the transition team projects that as many as 900,000 jobs could be created in the first year by allocating $30 billion to projects focused on:
- Boosting adoption of electronic health records;
- Upgrading the electrical grid; and
- Expanding broadband access to rural and underserved communities.
The study was published this month.
However, some experts warn that larger-scale changes are needed to encourage physicians to use EHRs and other health IT (Lohr, New York Times, 1/26).
Roadblocks?
Amendments to legislation in the economic stimulus package that the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved Thursday are drawing criticism from some lobbyists and advocacy groups, CongressDaily reports.
An amendment by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) would require that health IT purchases funded by the bill be restricted to products manufactured in the U.S. using domestic materials.
Kara Calvert, a lobbyist for the Information Technology Industry Council, said that the amendment "could create unnecessary, artificial barriers" to IT adoption.
In addition, privacy advocates have criticized an amendment by Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would aim to guarantee pharmacists access to the same patient information as physicians.
Ashley Katz, director of Patient Privacy Rights, and Deven McGraw of the Center for Democracy and Technology warned that the provision could permit patients' medical information to be used for marketing purposes.
The trade group America's Health Insurance Plans spoke out against an amendment by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) that would require personal information to be encrypted.
An AHIP spokesperson said the provision would be a hurdle to "care coordination and disease management, quality assessment, comparative effectiveness research and prevention and wellness programs" (Noyes, CongressDaily, 1/23).