Hospital and doctors are responding to cuts in reimbursement rates by loading patients down with surprise out-of-network charges, often unnecessarily. Price transparency is a first step towards empowering the consumer to fight back.

VA employees who spoke out against fraud in the system through official channels were punished. Dozens of cases of whistleblower intimidation are now under investigation, and several of the whistleblowers are telling their stories to the public.

Every year Medicare allocates billions of dollars to doctors in fraudulent expenses that the government has deemed too costly to investigate.

A new federal investigation confirms a whistleblower’s claims that VA hospitals are systematically hiding records about average waiting times at their facilities. The VA may not be such a good model for health reform after all.