The Sunday Times featured a long and detailed article about the costs of colonoscopies, which the Times says explain "Why U.S. leads the world in health expenditures."
It was a fine article, but I thought it would have been even better had it included two thoughts that were missing.
The first is ObamaCare, which wasn't mentioned at all. One of the promises of ObamaCare is that it was supposed to help rein in these out of control costs and "reform" health care. But the problems outlined in the Times article seem to be going on despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and the article gives no indication at all of what the effect, if any, that the implementation of the law will have on the problems.
The second is compensation for physicians. The Times article reports on how much gastroenterologists and anesthesiologists are paid for each procedure, and there is a mention of a company called Physicians Endoscopy that "tells prospective physician partners that they can look forward to 'distributions averaging over $1.4 million a year to all owners.'" But there's no aggregate data on how much money anesthesiologists or gastroenterologists earn each year, or how it compares to what physicians in those specialties earn in other countries.