At least 3,900 Medicare millionaires revealed in U.S. data
A small group of doctors accounted for a large chunk of Medicare payments once again, data released by the U.S. government show.
Medicare paid at least 3,900 individual health-care providers at least $1 million in 2013, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Overall, the agency said it released data on $90 billion in payments to 950,000 individual providers and organizations. On average, doctors were reimbursed about $74,000, though five received more than $10 million.
The U.S. government has been increasing transparency for Medicare, which accounts for the largest portion of federal spending after defense and Social Security. CMS also released information Monday about $62 billion in Medicare payments to hospitals and outpatient facilities in 2013, reflecting more than 7 million discharges.
The data exclude the privately run program known as Medicare Advantage, which accounted for about 30 percent of beneficiaries last year, and the drug prescription benefits of Medicare Part D. Payments in the drug program were released for the first time earlier this year.
Some payments were sent to organizations rather than individuals. There are about 897,000 active physicians in the U.S., according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Medicare covers about 54 million people, including the elderly and some who are disabled or who have end-stage kidney disease. Payments for inpatient and outpatient care accounted for the bulk of Medicare's budget, while doctors got about 16 percent of spending, excluding Medicare Advantage.
The U.S. spent about $586 billion on Medicare in 2013, or about 20 percent of the country's health-care spending.
Medicare payments to doctors were long kept from the public after medical associations argued in the early 1980s that their release would violate physicians' privacy. In May 2013, a federal judge lifted a 33-year-old injunction on the data following a lawsuit by Dow Jones & Co. The Obama administration decided in 2014 to make all payment information public.
Last year, some of the doctors who were shown as receiving the biggest payments said that multiple members of their medical groups were billing using a single provider identifier. Doctor groups also faulted the data for including reimbursements for drugs to physicians, not just payments for procedures.
For instance, many eye doctors topped the 2012 data, because they received payments to cover the cost of a treatment for degenerative eye disease that they administer in their offices. This year, the U.S. is including an explanation of that drug payment system and identifying payments tied to drugs. Medicare typically pays doctor 6 percent more than the average cost of medications administered in that manner.