It’s About Time

Doctors Abusing Medicare Face Fines and Expulsion! With the cost of everything going up and government spending going up this article on The New York Times (NYT) website is great news. This article also interests me because I work for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) state quality improvement organization.

The article says, “The Obama administration is cracking down on doctors who repeatedly overcharge Medicare patients, and for the first time in more than 30 years the government may disclose how much is paid to individual doctors treating Medicare patients.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/us/doctors-abusing-medicare-to-face-fines.html?hp)

In understanding how important these new penalties are, we need to know how many people are affected and how much the government spends annually on Medicare services. The article provided links to other published articles about Medicare and Medicaid on the NYT website to provide some background information.  Other links within the article helped me find these stats:
·         Medicare provides coverage for items and services for over 43 million beneficiaries. (http://cms.gov/Medicare/Coverage/CoverageGenInfo/index.html)
·         Medicare spending grew 6.2% to $554.3 billion in 2011, or 21 percent of total NHE.
·         Medicare spending is estimated to have grown 6.3% in 2011 and projected to grow an average of 6.1% per year over the projection period. (https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NHE-Fact-Sheet.html)

An article about government spending and regulations has to have proper information. Most government reports and legal documents can be accessed online on the website of the agency being discussed.  An article about government policy or regulations should, to be credible, have a link to a supporting document or official government maintained website. There is no reason for any non-governmental sites to be cited or used as a source. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law that gives you the right to access information from the federal government. It is often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government (www.foia.gov).

The NYT article shared three important links in the article, all linking to government sites. From the government links I was able to find the full, official document for the rules and regulations changes.  The article also provided the link to official report that led to the changes. The last link directs readers to the policy that allows for the information on amounts paid to individual physicians under the Medicare program to be released to the public.

 

This NYT article provides transparency and access to the sources for me to say this information in it is credible.