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As we’ve written here before, the government can play a large, often inadvertent, role in the information industry. The latest example, as reported recently in the New York Times, is a clash between the Bush Administration and a group of the largest employers over the release of Medicare’s patient claims information. The Business Roundtable, a respected group of CEOs from the nation’s largest corporations, wants access to Medicare’s data so that it can analyze individual physicians’ charges and outcomes, and seek ways to control soaring healthcare costs. President Bush has spoken of the need for greater transparency in the healthcare industry and has urged hospitals to make cost and outcomes data available to consumers.
But the White House says privacy laws protecting both patients and doctors prohibit the government from releasing the data. The Business Roundtable represents such large companies as Boeing, Cendant, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Exxon, and FEDEX, which collectively provide healthcare coverage to 10 million employees and their families. Medicare, the largest healthcare insurer, processes over a billion claims a year and therefore has the critical mass of data required to analyze physician fees and patient outcomes. While Medicare currently publishes information online to help consumers compare the costs of hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, and kidney dialysis centers, it does not provide comparative data about doctors.
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