HHS has released data on Medicare payments to doctors, which are discussed here. The Post had a good article this morning, discussing some of the reasons for variations in payments among specialties, etc. Putting that story and the Wonkblog post together gives the usual conclusion: it's complicated. Maybe I'm biased, but when I read articles about farm policy and the food movement that's my usual reaction: you're oversimplifying, it's more complicated than that. I'd venture to state a general rule: the knowledge an insider has is more complicated than the knowledge an outsider can discover.
Having said that, I have to go back 20 years when EWG was suing USDA for payments to farmers. My reaction then, in discussions with an IT person, was reserved--it seemed to me that we treated farmers as persons under the Privacy Act, which meant their data should be private as well. The Court of Appeals for the district disagreed with my opinion. Over the years I've come to believe that government payments should be public. Even though I've little faith in the ability of the media to get a good understanding of the issues, either with farm payments or doctors payments, more data is better than less.
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