Three years in, what's the legacy of the HITECH portion of the bill? Where does it rank with the other portions of ARRA? You argue that it is certainly one of the most visible. Could it be that it's the best way to secure ARRA's legacy in the general public's mind?

People are going to see their healthcare change. It's going to change their relationship with their doctor, it's going to improve their care, it's going to improve care in general as you begin to see that interplay with comparative effectiveness, for which there was $1.1 billion [in the stimulus], which was unprecedented.

I think it's going to have a huge impact on cost. It's always hard to quantify what it would have been without it, but just in terms of less mistakes and less redundant tests and less unnecessary visits to the doctor when you can just knock some of this out online.

I think that's going to make a real difference. It's real change. The question is: Is anyone going to remember that it was part of the stimulus? I don't know. Maybe after everybody buys my book.

But one of the lessons of my book: what are the politics of this and what are the politics o that, and should he have tried healthcare reform first, should he have done the auto bailout when it was so unpopular … well, after doing all these incredibly unpopular things that have created a lot of change, he's still pretty popular!

And even if he wasn't, I think one of the lessons – I talk about this with Charlie Baker, a Republican who ran for governor of Massachusetts and ran Harvard Pilgrim – we were on a panel together and he said his takeaway from my book was: "Do stuff." And I think health IT is one example where there had been a lot of talking about stuff, and I think people would have laughed about a $27 billion investment. "You just can't do that." But you can, if you have 60. Sometimes getting 60 votes is ugly. And when Rahm's involved it's not suitable for young ears. But if you can do it, and you're willing to take people yelling at you that it's not perfect, and you're a sellout, and why is there no public option, and why isn't it bigger, and why is there that money for catfish subsidies, you can really make big change. And I think this is a pretty good example.

You talk about the politics of it. But I'm reminded of an interview a colleague of mind did recently with someone from the American Academy of Family Physicians, who said he was kind of happy that health IT sort of floats under the radar and lets health reform and Obamacare take the heat. You can get some stuff done when its not under the microscope, or being railed about on Fox News.

That's a good point, that's a good point. When they were doing that lame duck deal, in December 2010, after the election, when they did all those tax cuts and McConnell and Biden cut a deal, and they extended the cuts for the rich and in exchange they extended the payroll tax cut for the middle class, the real stumbling block was that the Republicans decided everything that was in the stimulus had to go. And Gene Sperling [then acting as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner] was running around saying, 'Half of this is your stuff! Stuff you wanted in the bill!' Y'know, the problem with Obamacare is not so much the care part as the Obama part. Or cap and trade suddenly became toxic the minute it became Obama's cap and trade. I think a lot of stuff in the stimulus got that scarlet letter – and so far I think health IT has largely avoided that.

So if there is a Romney presidency, or a Jeb Bush 2016, they'll hopefully be able to be reasonable about it, unlike so many other previously uncontroversial policies that have become anathema to the party.

And so much of the HITECH money has already been spent. But you think, no matter who wins the election, it will be safe? There have been bills introduced to defund ARRA before.

I think one of the main planks of the pledge to America that Republicans ran on in 2010 was to rescind all the unspent stimulus money. And of the couple hundred billion dollars that were still unspent they rescinded … zero.

So, I don't know. I'd be really surprised if they picked that fight. Especially since it was something they'd supported in the past, even conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Joe Barton. Same goes for comparative effectiveness: Gingrich wrote an op-ed in the New York Times with John Kerry and the Moneyball guy, Billy Beane. They were pushing "Moneyball for healthcare" – comparative effectiveness – back in those crazy days before it became Sharia socialism.