WSJ: Federal judge advances medical records case

The lawsuit, brought by the newspaper's publisher, seeks to overturn an injunction that keeps the public from being able to see Medicare billing records. In related news, The Fiscal Times examines Medicare waste and improper payments.  

The Wall Street Journal: Medicare Records Case Moves Forward In Court
A federal judge in Florida has ruled that a case aimed at overturning a 32-year-old injunction that bars the public from seeing the Medicare billing records of individual doctors can proceed. The case was brought in January by Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, on the grounds that releasing the records would enable state medical boards, nonprofit organizations, universities and newspapers to act as watchdogs over the $500 billion Medicare program (Carreyrou, 9/27).

The Fiscal Times: How Medicare Wastes Almost $50 Billion a Year
Improper payments – to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason -; cost Medicare $48 billion last year, or nearly 10 percent of the $516 billion spent on care for seniors ... the losses at Medicare call into question the efficacy of contracting with some of the nation's largest insurance companies to process Medicare claims, spot suspicious billing, and refer cases to law enforcement (Terhune, 8/27).