djplong - What your grandmother experienced was a tragedy just as what happened to Buggyone's sister-in-law's father was clearly abuse. You continue to rail against private insurance companies, but both of the procedures were authorized by Medicare not private insurers. We need to ask if private insurers would have authorized these expenditures or vetoed them until proof of need was established? Medicare does not care. After all, the government is picking up the bill

You ask why medical care is more expensive in the United States than other countries. Let me use Canada as an example. The United States has 25.9 MRI machines per 1,000,000 people. Canada has 6.7. The figures for CT machines is 34.3 vs 2.7. Canada spends less on these tests simply because they cannot deliver the level of service provided in the US. The easiest way to reduce medical costs is to not provide them. I do not disagree that we need to reduce medical costs as a percentage of GDP and must attack the problem. We need to look at all the causes of medical cost inflation. It is worth noting that the explosion in US medical costs started in the 60's when Medicare came into existence.