President Barack Obama signed the massive $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law Feb. 17 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
The law sets aside more than $100 billion for healthcare, including $19.2 billion to provide incentives for doctors and hospitals to use healthcare information technology.
The Act also includes $86.7 billion in temporary federal funding for Medicaid and $21.4 billion to help unemployed workers afford healthcare coverage through COBRA.
President Obama said the new law will help an estimated 7 million Americans who have lost their healthcare coverage to layoffs retain it under COBRA, and roughly 20 million Americans will be able to keep their Medicaid coverage despite state budget shortfalls. The law also makes a commitment to wellness initiatives.
"So taken together with the enactment earlier this month of a long-delayed law to extend healthcare to millions more children of working families, we have done more in 30 days to advance the cause of healthcare reform than this country has done in an entire decade. That's something we should be proud of," Obama said.
The president has pushed hard for healthcare IT and would like every American to have an electronic medical record by 2014. The new law provides temporary bonus payments ranging from $44,000 to $64,000 for physicians and up to $11 million for hospitals that meaningfully use electronic health records.
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society officials said the healthcare IT aspect of the law "will have important economic benefits and result in improved patient care."
The White House has established a website, www.recovery.gov, with details on how the money is being spent.
Sara Rosenbaum, professor of health law and policy and chair of the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University said, "although many of the Act’s provisions are short-term, in many respects the legislation represents a transformational shift in U.S. health policy with enormous long term implications for quality, efficiency, and greater health equity."