Uh, no.
A patient complains about her emergency room bill. Of course after the fact, it looks absurd. But she didn’t know beforehand whether it was something serious or not.
So, the $1,000+ was for a physician’s evaluation, and the exclusion of life-threatening disease. Not just for the Tylenol.
Normally Dubner gets it right, but here the analysis is terribly short-sighted.
