Journal seeks to end ban on Medicare data
National News
The publisher of The Wall Street Journal went to court Tuesday seeking to overturn a 31-year ban on the release of records about how much Medicare money individual doctors receive.
Dow Jones & Company Inc. filed papers in federal court in Orlando in an effort to end a prohibition that was implemented in 1979 following a successful lawsuit in Florida by the American Medical Association.
Dow Jones called the ban outdated and said it had limited the data reporters for The Wall Street Journal were able to obtain last year for a series of stories that examined abuses in the Medicare system.
"There is no legally supportable justification for maintaining a sweeping and obsolete injunction that for over thirty years has prevented the American public from knowing the true extent of Medicare waste, abuse and fraud," Dow Jones said in its filing.
The president of the American Medical Association said that members of the public could draw misleading conclusions from the data if it is released, given its complexity and "significant limitations."
"Physicians who provide care to Medicare patients are already subject to widespread governmental oversight," Dr. Cecil Wilson of Winter Park, Fla., said in a statement. "These federal agencies and contractors have access to the full range of Medicare data and are aggressively ferreting out improper claims."
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USCIS Will Begin Accepting CW-1 Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019
On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
Since USCIS expects to receive more petitions than the number of CW-1 visas available for FY 2019, USCIS may conduct a lottery to randomly select petitions and associated beneficiaries so that the cap is not exceeded. The lottery would give employers the fairest opportunity to request workers, particularly with the possibility of mail delays from the CNMI.
USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.