Reading Tea Leafs of the Federal Budget

We have been waiting anxiously awaiting President Obama's proposed budget for FY 2012 to see what kind of signals he sent regarding spending priorities for the future. It was released yesterday and contained a reasonable increase for the National Institutes of Health compared to the decrease that had been suggested by House Republicans. The absolute amount of the increase is less important than the demonstration that the administration will continue to fund healthcare research.

We have been waiting to see if the funding priorities continued in the same direction before we decided to dedicate time and resources to the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) initiative. It appears that we have enough information that we can finish our ACO product and begin to sell to selected ACOs. While the exact specifications for ACOs are still under development our products are sufficiently flexible that we can configure them based on what we know now and then reconfigure them if the government takes a surprise turn.

Gary