What Things Cost

The wife of a friend of mine has cancer, and this brought on an eating disorder, which had to be fixed before some of the cancer treatments could begin. Kaiser arranged for the wife to enter a locked facility here in Sonoma County that works with eating disorder patients. She stayed there for ten days and left in better shape. The treatment was paid for by Kaiser and Medicare, but my friend got a look at the bill, which came to more than $10,000 a day. Now of course we are talking here about maintaining a building, paying orderlies to guard the place, cooking up some bland food, short visits by doctors and nurses, some medications, maybe some use of an expensive machine that paid for itself in its first three months, etc. I figure that all that must be worth at least $2,000 a day. The other $8,000 a day was profit. We have a great system, eh?