How should the U.S. pay for the massive health IT investments state and federal legislators crave? Well, if you ask former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the answer is to funnel the dollars brought in from anti-fraud efforts into funds that will pay for IT investment legislation. To date, federal auditors have estimated that more than $60 million in fraud, theft or otherwise unaccounted for moneys occurs in the Medicare program each year--at a minimum--and note that if even a small percentage was re-collected, there'd be plenty to play with. (Of course, CMS hasn't been doing as great a job of retrieving fraudulently-obtained funds as it could be, according to the HHS IG, but let's assume for argument's sake that it tightens up its act.)
To make this happen, Congress would have to change the Congressional Budget Act, a move that shouldn't prove easy. This initiative would also continue Gingrich's long-term fight with the Congressional Budget Office, the agency whose job it is to examine legislation's cost impacts. Gingrich has suggested that the CBO does too little to examine the future savings that health IT would create, and as a result, tends to come up with cost estimates which doom new bills.
Gingrich is offering to bring together interest groups within healthcare, including hospitals, pharmacists, doctors, insurance companies, state governments and more, into a single interest group that would push for changes in federal budget laws, allowing for such uses of anti-fraud recoveries. He contends that if all of these groups united behind the notion of broader health IT use by 2012, then legislation could be drafted by early 2009, which might attract wide support on the Hill.
To learn more about Gingrich's plans:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)
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