- Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber and Jennifer LaFleur ProPublica
- Read Time: 21 mins
Medicare is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year by failing to rein in doctors who routinely give patients pricey name-brand drugs when cheaper generic alternatives are available. ProPublica analyzed the prescribing habits of 1.6 million practitioners nationwide and found that a tiny fraction of them are having an outsized impact on spending in Medicare's massive drug program.