about to buy. Balancing cost and quality is how we choose. It is all about checking the pocketbook and kicking the tires.
• But pocketbook-tire thinking goes out the window when something bad is happening to you or the one you love and you arrive in the emergency room. With insurance or the government paying premium dollars for your care, and someone's health is at risk, you expect the very best. But how do you measure what is best care?
• Measuring quality in health care is the new goal of the Medicare bureaucracy. For example presently they are measuring how fast antibiotics are started on patients with infection; how often nurses and doctors wash hands; how the risk for clotting is prevented; how often patients have to come back to the hospital in case they were sent home too soon; and the list goes on. What's more, all this information is becoming available to anyone on the internet, with the hopes that people will become smarter consumers, kick the tires more, and all of this will drive up quality.
• However we should realize there are limitations to such a process. Sometimes

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