mr. chairman , i am pleased that the chairman accepted an amendment that would strengthen the privacy safeguards within the office of information technology to which our committee appropriated over $ 75 million for safeguarding information . 
medical information is so critically important as we start to put together a national infrastructure of information technology that is interoperable and that is transparent and that will allow providers to adequately provide the care that they need to , with all of the knowledge of the patient 's background that they need to have , in order to make the right decisions at the point of care . 
i thank the chairman for yielding to me and for supporting this amendment . 
