Bill would allow Medicare pay to be posted online

Your Medicare data billing will be online for all to see if a bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate becomes law.

Bill co-sponsor Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) says requiring the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to post the data would combat Medicare fraud by exposing physicians with questionably large payments. The government has been barred from disclosing the data since 1979, when a Florida judge ruled that individual billing data were exempt from public disclosure laws. Dow Jones & Co., parent company of The Wall Street Journal, is suing to overturn that decision.