The cost of a single aspirin in the hospital  can be as high as $25. That's just one Bayer aspirin. You could've gone next door to Walgreens and got a whole bottle for less.  I agree, healthcare itself is very expensive. The rising cost of 'pharmaceuticals' have sky-rocketed.  I have seen more than one person I knew start out with a pill to control blood pressure, being given another to avert side effects and another to control those side effects, until they had an entire TV tray filled with different prescriptions. I well remember tossing the unused bottles of pills in the garbage after the person's heart 'failed'  and wondering, did the pills help them live longer, or did they actually contribute to an early death.   Don't know. I do know as we grow older, our liver doesn't process all those drugs/chemicals as well as someone much younger  and I've also wondered how the liver can hold up under such a heavy assault of drugs/chemicals. There again, I don't know. I'm not a doctor.