During the U.S. presidential campaign in 1987-1988, Blumenthal was chief health advisor to the Dukakis campaign. Twenty years later, in 2008, he was senior health adviser to the Obama campaign. On March 20, 2009, President Obama appointed Blumenthal to be the National Health Information Technology Coordinator, just a month after the enactment of a federal stimulus package that included about $19 billion in incentives, by Medicare and Medicaid, for the adoption of electronic health records.