President Bush on Thursday proposed increasing federal funds to promote computerized medical records, which he said would save patients’ lives and money as he touted plans to overhaul the health care industry.

On the first trip of his second term, Bush said a standardized information technology system for doctors’ offices and hospitals would help save lives endangered by poor or incomplete record-keeping, prescription errors and other problems.

He also endorsed enhanced technological efficiency as a means of making health care more affordable for individuals, saying improved procedures for record-keeping and prescriptions could reduce the $1.6 trillion U.S. annual health care bill by up to 20 percent.

“Most industries in America use information technology to make their businesses more cost-effective ... and the truth of the matter is, health care hadn’t,” Bush said. “We got docs still writing records by hand.”

The White House sees automation of medical records, including prescriptions, as part of a larger health care reform effort that includes capping medical malpractice damages, increasing the number of county health clinics for the poor, promoting health savings accounts and more flexible insurance coverage for small business.

Bush campaigned for re-election last year on a plan to provide computerized records for every patient within a decade. On Thursday, the White House said it was seeking to double funding for the effort to $100 million in the current fiscal year and would ask for $125 million in the fiscal year 2006 budget that Bush will submit to Congress on Feb. 7.

AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE

Speaking at a White House forum at the Cleveland Clinic, which is helping develop an information technology standard for medical records, Bush said, “The fundamental question facing the country is, can we have a health care system that is available and affordable without the federal government running it.”

The United States, which unlike other industrialized countries has no universal health care system, is home to about 45 million people who lack medical insurance, including 11 million children.

Bush, who made government involvement in health care a heated partisan issue in last year’s campaign, said an emerging information technology system for health care must safeguard patient privacy.

“I’m sure people are out there saying, I don’t want my medical records floating around you know, the ether. I presume I’m like most Americans,” Bush said. “I think my records should be private. I don’t want people prying into them.”

The administration also proposed a new electronic regulation for Medicare’s prescription drug benefit plan that calls for doctors and pharmacies that participate to use e-mail to execute Medicare prescriptions.