The Wall Street Journal forced the government to publicly release important data that had been kept secret for decades, and analyzed it to uncover extensive medical abuses that cost taxpayers. Persistent reporting and a successful Journal lawsuit against the government led the U.S. in April to release Medicare billing by doctors and others to the public for the first time since the late 1970s. This triggered a sweeping WSJ investigation into the $600 billion federal system called “Medicare Unmasked.”
The Journal’s efforts “changed the whole paradigm,” allowing all of the media to uncover potential medical fraud and abuse, said Donald White of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health & Human Services. “You guys are doing stories exposing stuff, but a lot of others are too. And now that (the government) has released that data, it realizes it’s going to have to release more.”
In the process, the Journal has struck a major blow for gaining accessibility to government data at a time when the Obama administration is fighting to keeping information closely held from the media and public.
The Journal has been widely recognized for its legal and journalistic efforts. A Washington Post editorial said the newly released Medicare data “begin to illuminate the workings of a complex system of fee-for-service medicine whose seemingly uncontrollable costs have challenged U.S. policymakers for decades—yet disclosure had been resisted by doctors, who felt it would invade their financial privacy or distort public discussion by disseminating raw, out-of-context information.”
The Journal did far more than simply present the data. A team of reporters and data experts created numerous programs to analyze the numbers and make sense of them all. They developed new features to enhance the Journal’s database search tool and make it even more engaging and useful for consumers. The effort helped generate a series of interactive graphics, charts and other art.
The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank, cited the Journal for explaining the Medicare data trove with “a great deal of nuance in a reasonably simple, straightforward graphic.” “You’re really providing a great public service, particularly with the online database you’ve built,” said Leigh McKenna, government-affairs director for the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, a private-public partnership that in September 2014 awarded the Journal its Excellence in Public Awareness Award.
The Wall Street Journal’s extraordinary efforts to procure this Medicare data for the public—along with the impact its broader “Medicare Unmasked” reporting generated–is a model of computer-assisted journalism generating change for the public benefit.