[Growler]

I'll add this, for the sake of interest:

My mother died at 1640 Eastern Time on 17 Nov, 2010.

She was admitted to the hospital at ~1400 on 15 Nov, 2010.

The insurance company was billed ~$84,000 for those ~48 hours. For a patient who died.

In comparison: while she was being treated (chemotherapy, radiation) for her leukemia earlier in that year, she was in the hospital for approximately seven days. Each visit was billed out at ~200,000.

She was taking a prescription medication that - I'm totally not kidding here - cost ~$20,000 for a ninety day supply.

Immediately following her death, I "impounded" all of her medication to prevent my stepfather, who suffers late-stage Alzheimer's, from accidentally ingesting - or worse, giving out - those prescriptions. After reviewing what I had in the grocery bags before turning the prescriptions in for destruction, I had roughly $120,000 worth in prescriptions, according to the values assigned by the insurance companies.

All of that, for a patient who didn't survive nine months with leukemia.