&gt; The idea of pricing out hospital procedures as if they&#x27;re widgets or oil changes is ridiculous to begin with.<p>That seems pretty silly. There are plenty of procedures with marginal effect on survival and&#x2F;or quality-of-life, and a health-care consumer will have varying preferences for them.<p>A rich man might be willing to spend an hour in an MRI if he&#x27;s sprained his ankle; a poor man might prefer to keep his money and walk it off. Neither is wrong: they just have different preferences.<p>For that matter, given a choice between a $15 pill of Tylenol and dealing with an ache, I&#x27;d take the ache every day of the wee.k