As it had promised to do, the Medicare program issued data listing the amounts paid to individual physicians for services rendered by those physicians to Medicare beneficiaries for calendar year 2012.  CMS indicated that the data was issued “in order to make our healthcare system more transparent, affordable, and accountable.”  The Wall Street Journal has created a tool which allows users to search the CMS data set by name, specialty and location.  The Medicare announcement and data set link can be found here: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/Physician-and-Other-Supplier.html.