Open Source Study Included In US Stimulus Package

gclef writes "Buried deep in the details of the US stimulus package is an interesting provision that might go a long way toward helping Open Source software break into the medical area. It says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services should study the availability of open source health technology systems (PDF, page 488), compare their TCO against proprietary systems and report on what they find no later than Oct 1, 2010. Slashdotters may also be interested in the language that starts on page 553 of that PDF to see just what the final package says about broadband." The stimulus plan was approved by the Senate on Friday and is expected to be signed by President Obama by Monday.

Comments

Re:what stimulus package?

[Anonymous Coward]

$800 billion is ~$420 billion in 1982 dollars (using the GDP deflator; the other metrics give much smaller numbers). You have to account for inflation whenever you're talking about very large amounts of money since even a few years can make a 5-10% difference. Measuring Worth has a good calculator.

Re:What open source health technology systems?

[koutbo6]

its probably bigger in the UK than it is in the US. this might help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_healthcare_software
mind you, some of the research on open source I looked at considered openoffice a healthcare office suite.

And, double check the facts

[namespan]

US corporate taxes are the second-highest in the world behind Japan.

Is that statutory rates, or effective rates?

Also note that we're pretty solidly on the low end in personal income tax.

You can call US taxes a lot of things, but "low" is not one of them, especially considering the services what we get from the government in exchange for the taxes we pay.

If you want to argue that we could potentially be getting a better return on our tax dollars, then I'll agree. If nothing else, the example of per-capita public health spending comes to mind -- for a smaller amount, many other countries pull off universal insurance coverage. And I'm sure that aside, there's always work to do -- I think it'll be a long time before either by active policy study or by the evolutionary algorithm of competitive markets we've discovered most of the easy efficiency gains.

But if you want to argue that the U.S. isn't a pretty good place to live or do business, or if you want to argue that tax contributions to that are negligible, I'm off that boat.