Chairman Ensign, Senator Kerry, and members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today about how health information technology is transforming and will continue to transform health and healthcare in America.

We are on the cusp of enormous change. The level of scientific knowledge we will discover over the next 25 years will be four to seven times greater than the last 25 years. Combine this fact with the economic engines revving in China and India, we know that our current path is unsustainable. Look at the American manufacturing sector, particularly the pain of the automakers, where they spend more dollars per car in healthcare than they do in steel. This is the future of all sectors of the economy if we do not change.

The outlook for the federal government is no better. Healthcare consumes 26% of all federal spending and growing, dwarfing every other priority. The looming retirement of the Baby Boomers and their entrance into Medicare will call for painful choices tomorrow if we do nothing today. With continued budget deficits running hundreds of billions of dollars every year, despite the recent "success" of cutting the deficit in half, we will pay a severe price if we do not
transform health and healthcare. . . .

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Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI.