CBO: Health IT Deficit of $17 billion over 10 Years

According to page 16 and 17 of this (PDF) Congressional Budget Office report. According to the report, the 2009 Stimulus package spending on Health Information Technology will run a deficit of $17 billion over 10 years: “…As a result of the effects of the health IT provisions on direct spending and revenues, CBO estimates that enacting the bill would increase on-budget deficits by a total of
$18.3 billion over the 2009-2019 period; it would increase the unified budget deficit over that period by an estimated $17 billion. Increased spending in the near term would be partially offset by Medicare savings in later years; as a result, those provisions would increase deficits by about $30 billion through 2014 but would yield savings in later years, reducing the net 11-year impact to $17 billion total through 2019…”
There you have it folks, no break-even point, perhaps not ever. Ten years in the ditch is a very long time. The only thing that could turn this around is a ban on federal spending for proprietary Electronic Medical Record software in which only Affero General Public License (AGPL) version 3 software can be purchased with federal funds. Current proprietary vendors can change their product licenses to AGPL to receive public money.