Statement from Business Roundtable on Health Information Technology Provision in the Economic Stimulus Plan

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--“Enacting health IT legislation has been the top health care policy priority for Business Roundtable for the past five years. We are proud to have worked diligently with Senators Kennedy, Hatch, Clinton and Enzi to develop bipartisan health IT legislation.

“Enacting health IT legislation has been the top health care policy priority for Business Roundtable for the past five years. We are proud to have worked diligently with Senators Kennedy, Hatch, Clinton and Enzi to develop bipartisan health IT legislation.”

“The inclusion of health IT in the stimulus plan means that our health system has officially entered the digital age and that health care providers will receive a down payment to help them effectively and rapidly adopt the technology. Health IT will reduce fatal medical errors and improve the quality of health care for Americans while lowering costs and creating jobs.

“While health IT's passage is critical, Business Roundtable is pressing for further reforms to improve our health care system, create a competitive, private health care market and ensure all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care. We look forward to building on this progress with Congress as they take up this critical issue in the months ahead,” said Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman, Business Roundtable Consumer Health and Retirement Initiative and Chairman and CEO, Verizon Communications.

Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with more than $5 trillion in annual revenues and nearly 10 million employees. Member companies comprise nearly a third of the total value of the U.S. stock markets and pay nearly half of all corporate income taxes paid to the federal government. Annually, they return $133 billion in dividends to shareholders and the economy.

Business Roundtable companies give more than $7 billion a year in combined charitable contributions, representing nearly 60 percent of total corporate giving. They are technology innovation leaders, with more than $70 billion in annual research and development spending – more than a third of the total private R&D spending in the U.S.