AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT (February, 2009)

As lawmakers negotiated the the stimulus bill, they threatened to eliminate many health care provisions. We acted swiftly and partnered with Professor Harold Pollack (University of Chicago) to launch a Healthy Stimulus Campaign. We delivered our petition to every member of Congress to send a strong signal that health care must be a national priority. While some funding was lost, many health provisions made it into the final package. Details are below.

Visit the HHS.gov/Recovery site for more details on how the funds are being used.

Health Information Technology: $19 billion
Jumpstart efforts to computerize health records to cut costs and reduce medical errors.
Prevention and Wellness Fund: $1 billion
Fight preventable chronic diseases and infectious diseases
Includes hospital infection prevention, immunization programs, and evidence-based disease prevention
Healthcare Effectiveness Research: $1.1 billion
Healthcare Research and Quality programs to compare the effectiveness of different medical treatments.
Community Health Centers: $2 billion
Increase the number of uninsured Americans who receive quality healthcare.
Renovate clinics and make health information technology improvements.
Training Primary Care Providers: $500 million
Address shortages and prepare our country for universal healthcare by training primary healthcare providers.
Includes doctors, dentists, and nurses. Helps pay medical school expenses for students who agree to practice in underserved communities through the National Health Service Corps
Indian Health Service: $500 million
Modernize aging hospitals and health clinics.
Make healthcare technology upgrades to improve healthcare for underserved rural populations.
Veterans Medical Facilities: $1 billion
The Department has $5 billion backlog in needed repairs, including energy efficiency projects, at its 153 medical facilities.
Department of Defense Medical Facilities: $1.3 billion
New construction to provide state-of-the-art medical care to service members and their families
National Institutes of Health Biomedical Research: $8.7 billion
Expand good jobs in biomedical research to study diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and heart disease.
Without the ARRA, the NIH was able to fund less than 20% of approved applications.
University Research Facilities: $1.3 billion
For NIH to renovate and equip university research facilities and help them compete for biomedical research grants.
The National Science Foundation estimates a maintenance backlog of $3.9 billion in biological science research space.
Medicaid: $87 billion
Additional federal funding to states (FMAP) to avoid cuts in services
COBRA: 65% subsidy of COBRA premiums
For laid-off workers for up to 9 months

Source: http://appropriations.house.gov.