Mr. SUNUNU. In calling up this amendment, I wish to make sure this budget resolution effectively addresses the issue of health information technology. I know the issue was addressed, in part, in the construction of the budget resolution, but I think we have a historic opportunity to enact legislation this year that makes a difference, and the kind of technology available to providers, to doctors and nurses, to patients, technology that improves efficiency, reduces medical errors, and improves the quality of care, not for thousands but for millions of Americans, especially older Americans on Medicare.

A lot of these benefits were recognized in the resolution, but I think we need to go further. We need to make sure this budget resolution, and the health care fund that was established in it, focuses on electronic prescribing in particular.

While there are a number of areas of health care information technology that have great potential, this is an area of health care IT, electronic prescriptions, whose time is now. In hundreds of thousands of places around the country, electronic prescribing systems are being used, being used effectively, to save time, to save money, to reduce unnecessary errors in the dispensing of medicine, ultimately improving the quality of care and reducing costs.

I think it is essential that this budget resolution focus on electronic prescribing and legislation to expand the use and access of electronic prescriptions because it is something we can get done this year. There is a lot of partisanship, a lot of differences of opinion on many different parts of this budget resolution. But in this particular area, we have a bipartisan approach. This has been introduced, and Senator Kerry, Senator Ensign, Senator Stabenow, and I have crafted electronic prescribing legislation that will do all these things and I think more.

It reduces the number of errors, it increases the usage of electronic prescriptions. As I say, in the end, I think it significantly improves the Medicare Program for all our seniors. It is legislation that is ready to go. It is legislation that can be enacted today. It is legislation that has bipartisan support.

The way we make this difference, the way we improve the acceptance of electronic prescribing is, first and foremost, by providing some incentives, some costs and funding to physicians to purchase the systems, to purchase the software, to fund the hand-held units that are especially valuable in remote locations or rural areas.

So we have grants to make those systems available. Second, we provide a bonus, Medicare provides reimbursement to physicians who are using an electronic prescription system. We give them a 1-percent bonus in their reimbursement rate. We do this over a 3-year period. Then, at the end of that period, grants and incentives for those who have not been able to or have not been willing to use electronic prescription systems, we have a penalty.

Even with that penalty provision, we do allow the head of Health and Human Services to make exceptions because there are some underserved parts of the country, rural parts of the country, where such a system might not be as effective or as feasible. But in the vast majority of networks and provider systems and parts of the country, this is a technology whose time has come.

There are over 1 million cases a year where a mistake is made, where there is an adverse reaction because of a mistake in issuing a prescription. If this legislation can even reduce a fraction of those errors, we will have done a great deal to improve the health care system under Medicare for our seniors.

Because of the impact this legislation has, it has actually been evaluated as saving Medicare money in the near term, saving Medicare between $1 and $3 billion a year in the long term. There are not many pieces of legislation where you can say we are reducing the cost of the program for the taxpayers and improving the quality of care and the options available to the beneficiaries, to the seniors, and the retirees who depend on Medicare every day.

So this amendment would add to the language that establishes a health care technology fund to make clear that our priority within that fund needs to be on legislation to improve access to electronic prescriptions; that such legislation should use financial incentives; it should provide grants to purchase equipment; it should include bonus payments; in the long run it should even consider changing the allocations of those who are not willing to use this incredibly valuable technology that is available today.

I think this is an amendment that makes the reserve fund for health information technology even stronger. It sets the priorities in the right way. I urge my colleagues to support its adoption.

I yield the floor.

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