Saturday, April 9, 2011

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., April 9 & 10, 2011


The news "reporting" on the budget "deal" is so piss poor that at the moment I have more questions and suspicions than answers.

We'll know more as the weekend progresses.

In the meantime...
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1 comment:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013604576249090982504246.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_health

Two senators have introduced legislation to overturn a 1979 court injunction that bars the government from revealing what individual physicians earn from Medicare.

The Medicare Data Access for Transparency and Accountability Act, or DATA Act, was introduced Thursday by Sens. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Charles Grassley (R., Iowa). They both serve on the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare.

* NOW HERE'S SOME BIPARTISANISM I CAN LIVE WITH!

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

That information is stored in the Medicare-claims database, widely considered one of the best tools for finding fraud and abuse in the $500 billion federal health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

The Wall Street Journal, together with the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, obtained from the government limited access to the database last year. Despite severe restrictions on using the data, the Journal was able to mine it and publish a series of articles exposing how doctors and other medical practitioners appear to be gaming Medicare to increase revenue.

(*NOD*)

The judge who issued the 1979 injunction shielding the data ruled that physicians' privacy trumped the public's interest in knowing how tax dollars are spent.

* HUH...???

He relied on a privacy provision in the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The new bill explicitly exempts physician Medicare billing data from that FOIA provision.

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

April 10, 2011 at 1:57 PM

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