Tom Coburn: “this economic stimulus bill contains $87.7 billion to bail out State Medicaid programs and more than $21 billion to have…”

“this economic stimulus bill contains $87.7 billion to bail out State Medicaid programs and more than $21 billion to have the Government control the adoption rate of health information technology (health IT) through Medicare and Medicaid. We are in the middle of an economic crisis today. Yet the health IT spending through Medicare and Medicaid will not start until 2011. Interestingly enough, the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, has stated it ``anticipates near-universal adoption of health IT over the next quarter century even without legislative action. As a result, the 0.3 percent reduction in health care costs estimated to result in the near term from enactment of this bill would diminish in later years, when the use of health IT will be more pervasive in any event.'' So this stimulus bill spends money more than 2 years after the economic crisis has started on an issue that the market would have addressed on its own. This is just one of the many examples that illustrate that the stimulus is, as recently noted by the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, ``90 percent social policy and 10 percent economic policy.'' I believe that this ``social policy'' will be counterproductive to the goals of universal adoption of health IT because it will mire the health care system in new bureaucratic red tape. Another example of the stimulus's social policies is its inclusion of $1.1 billion for research on medical treatment comparative effectiveness.…”