Government Pays Doctors $44,000 to Use an iPad

Summary: More upward wealth redistribution from the good folks at the Obama administration! Now starving doctors will finally be able to afford an iPad thanks to your generous tax contribution! With the increased efficiency of electronic record keeping they'll probably even be able to fire some of their fat cat administrative staff!  (It's ironic that taxes were being taken out of the paychecks of these ~$25 per hour employees in order to provide subsidies for doctors who are 0.2% highest income earners in the world. This is compounded by the fact that the changeover will enable the doctors to save even more money by laying off administrative staff after the new technology renders them redundant.) The Obama administration strongly desires that all medical records be electronic. There's an app called Drchrono for the iPad which can make that transition happen. Logically, the government will give up to $44,000 to any doctor willing to use it. The funding will come through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) in which the government allocated $19.2 billion dollars to help move U.S. doctors to electronic medical record systems.  President Obama signed HITECH into law on February 17, 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), an economic stimulus bill. Thank goodness we were able to raise the debt ceiling! Now the government can afford to help these destitute medical professionals climb from the impoverished depths of the 0.2% highest income earners in the world to the 0.1% highest earners. I don't mean to imply that I oppose the adoption of electronic health records. I wholeheartedly support this goal. However, it’s important that middle class taxpayers know that they are subsidizing the top 0.2% richest Americans.