Medicare database reveals top-paid doctors [View all]

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-EXCITE

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and SERDAR TUMGOREN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Medicare paid a tiny group of doctors $3 million or more apiece in 2012. One got nearly $21 million.

Those are among the findings of an Associated Press analysis of physician data released Wednesday by the Obama administration, part of a move to open the books on health care financing.

Topping Medicare's list was Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, whose relationship with Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., made headlines last year after news broke that the lawmaker used the doctor's personal jet for trips to the Dominican Republic. Medicare paid Melgen $20.8 million.

AP's analysis found that a small sliver of the more than 825,000 individual physicians in Medicare's claims data base - just 344 physicians - took in top dollar, at least $3 million apiece for a total of nearly $1.5 billion.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140409/DAD2HU682.html

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This Jan. 31, 2010, file image released by Miami Dade College shows Dr. Salomon Melgen, posing for a photo at the book signing of "Growing American Roots", a book by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., at the college in Miami. Topping Medicare's list of highest paid physicians from it's claims database was Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, whose relationship with Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., made headlines last year after news broke that the lawmaker used the doctor's personal jet for trips to the Dominican Republic. Medicare paid Melgen $20.8 million. (AP Photo/Miami Dade College, Phil Roche, File)