Senate Likes Health IT, Too

The Senate is just a bit more generous than their friends in the House when it comes to electronic health records. In its version of the economic stimulus bill, the Senate threw in $5 billion for "jump starting efforts to computerize health records to cut costs and reduce medical errors." That's on top of the $18 billion the Senate Finance Committee's bill for e-health records, bringing the total to $25 billion. House Democrats want to spend $20 billion on e-health records. Not sure what an extra $5 billion gets you.

While those investments seem significant, estimates for automating Americans' health records range from $150 billion to much much more. (The likelihood is that it will be on the much-much-more end.) As a reminder, big-name tech companies like what they see.