Bipartisan Senate bills would open Medicare physician payment data to public

The Wall Street Journal: Bills Push Medicare Data Access
Two senators, a Republican and a Democrat, are pushing legislation to overturn a 1979 court injunction that bars the public from seeing what individual physicians earn from Medicare. That data, commonly known as the Medicare claims database, is widely considered one of the best tools for identifying fraud and abuse in the $500 billion federal health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled (Tamman and Schoofs, 3/3).

The Hill: Bipartisan Senate Duo Wants Medicare To Make Payments To Doctors Public
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are collaborating on legislation to require the federal government to make public how much it pays doctors who participate in Medicare, a Senate staffer said. ... The AMA argues that opening up the database would be a violation of doctors' privacy and could lead to some of them leaving the program (Pecquet, 3/2).