(Photo: Shutterstock)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has agreed to make 90 audits of private Medicare Advantage health plans public, which are expected to reveal hundreds of millions of dollars in overcharges to the government. Kaiser Health News sued the agency in the fall of 2019, alleging a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.

"It's incredibly frustrating that it took a lawsuit and years of pushing to make this vital information public," says Thomas Burke, a San Francisco attorney who represented the plaintiff. "Transparency — on a real-time basis — should be the norm for the public to have oversight of this multibillion-dollar, taxpayer-paid program."