technology

When journalist Steven Brill first began investigating the American health care system for his article "Bitter Pill, he started in a familiar place: medical bills. What he found shocked him. One patient, for example, paid $2,293 per day just for room and board in a hospital - about ten times more than he would have paid for a hotel room - and had little choice in the matter. 

"There's no marketplace at all," Brill says. "The person buying the service has no leverage, no power, and no visibility into the cost."