In the USA,,, and inside California, my sister recently fell on a concrete sidewalk and broke one tiny cheekbone and cracked one tiny bone in her wrist and 3 tiny cracks in her pelvis. But because of the Santa Clara County's trauma rules of any 3 injuries and age of near or at 65(shock?), she was double treated at two hospitals and double billed by each for duplicate x-rays and duplicate CAT scans!! Not for valid health or medical reasons, but just Capitalist profit-taking opportunistic behavior in American Hospitals, because they can, and the Feds wont stop them!!
CAT scans are $5000 each, and a few were done and then re-done at both hospitals!! There was no radiation monitor/'rad.badge' placed on my sister, the patient, at any of the 3 hospitals she had to go to in the end, because the Silicon Valley county and AMA rules do not require it!! Remember, this all happened not out in the wilds and uneducated woods of West Virginia or Wyoming or Texas or Mississippi, but here, right here, in California!!
The medical insurance company is for months refusing to pay both hospitals for redundant , duplicated, unnecessary and EXPENSIVE tests like CAT scans and many many too many x-rays regardless of the max. rads/yr. dosage. Who knows how long this fight will last. And the sickest part of the whole experience? Both hospitals in the South Bay are owned by the same Corporation! And the second hospital said 'we don't trust the first hospital to do proper x-rays or CAT scans or even Radiologist read them!"
Such is the too expensive, too many unnecessary tests, SICK state of American Medicine, year 2012.
