re: Hospital overcharging BS

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The biggest medical costs are concentrated on a fairly small segment of the population—people with one or more chronic illnesses, plus victims of accidents or violent crime. The cost is so concentrated, in fact, that an estimated five percent of the population accounts for 50 percent of total medical costs.

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Hundreds of billions of dollars each year are spent treating Americans who are in the last weeks, or days, of life.

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One famous, or perhaps notorious, advocate of limiting late-in-life medical spending is former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, who was given the nickname “Governor Gloom” in the 1980’s for his argument that the elderly have a “duty” to avoid costly care when the end is near. There’s only so much money available for medical care, Lamm noted, so it ought to be used in the most efficient way. In the face of bitter criticism, Lamm stuck to his guns. Just this spring he told the Denver Post: “When I look at the literature, and there are such things as $93,000 prostate operations at some stage of prostate cancer that might give two extra months of life, it is outrageous.”

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