Medicare data to be released

In the nation's capital late last month, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services must allow disclosure of data about individual doctors from its Medicare claims database.

With information on more than 40 million patients and 700,000 doctors, that database "is considered the mother lode for data on those who treat adults," allowing anyone to determine which doctors perform which procedures most frequently and how well they fare, "since Medicare recipients are a mainstay of most practices," the Los Angeles Times reports.

So much for the notion we don't yet have government-dominated health care in America.

The American Medical Association has long opposed releasing the Medicare data, concerned that individual doctors might suffer from comparisons that show too many of their patients dying, without accounting for the severity of the cases an individual physician handles.

Government policy, reflecting those concerns, has long limited the usefulness of the database by refusing to provide consumers with information sufficient to determine which doctors achieve the best results at the best cost.

Now, ruling for a consumer group that sued for access to the data, Judge Sullivan has now swept aside those objections, concluding "a significant public benefit" can be served by releasing the data, which he ordered the department to do by Sept. 21.

The lawsuit did not seek the release of individual patient data.

HHS could still appeal the ruling, although both President Bush and HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt have campaigned for greater openness and consumer empowerment in health care.

And those are precisely the issues on which this ruing should be judged. If the government is going to gather this kind of information, it's only reasonable to expect it should be provided to the taxpayers who funded the whole enterprise -- albeit it stripped of data that could violate the medical privacy of individual patients, of course.

A major reason for skyrocketing health costs is the tendency of many in the system to respond to the legitimate consumer question, 'How much will that cost?" with a dismissive, "Don't worry, it'll all be covered."

Doctors who perform a procedure most often tend to have the most success.

No, cheapest isn't always best -- preventive tests can save money in the long run. But if data is available to help determine which doctors make the best and most cost-effective decisions and diagnoses, patients deserve access to that data.

If they then have problems interpreting that information, the best course for the medical profession is to undertake to "inform their discretion" -- not to keep them permanently in the dark.