Opinion: Shining a light on Medicare payments

Now costing more than $500? billion per year, Medicare is central to the United States' fiscal predicament. For this complicated problem, there are many complicated proposed solutions. But what if we try something simple, like journalism? In essence, that is the argument that Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, is pressing in a federal court in Jacksonville, Fla. Dow Jones is asking District Judge Marcia Morales Howard to lift a 1979 court order that exempted from the Freedom of Information Act all provider-specific data on Medicare payments. Arguments ended in August, and a ruling could come at any time.