About 80% Of Hip Doctors Have No Idea How Much A Hip Replacement Costs

The isolation of The 10% from the nitty gritty economics of The 90% 

is a huge -- and unexplored component -- of wealth inequality.

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“Poverty is an anomaly to the rich. They cannot understand why the poor when hungry do not simply ring the bell”
Walter Bagehot.

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"A full belly does not believe in hunger."

Italian Proverb

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The rich may not be deliberately vicious.
But they are so stupefied by wealth as to be no good.

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G.K. Chesterton: "The Anarchy of The Rich"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/gk-chesterton-anarchy-of-rich.html

(It is a sign of the times that Americans has gone from considering Chesterton a conservative to seeing him as a left-wing radical.)

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"[O]rthopedic surgeons don't know much about how much their work contributes to that spending. They were able to correctly estimate the cost of a device only 21 percent of the time, according to a survey of 503 physicians at seven major academic medical centers published this week in the journal Health Affairs. Their guesses ranged from 1.8 percent of the actual price to 24.6 times the actual price. (Researchers could not release the actual costs because they signed nondisclosure agreements with the hospitals.)...Estimates within 20 percent of the actual cost were considered correct." Jenny Gold in The Washington Post.