>>I'm currently reading "Predictably Irrationaly" (by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist) and one chapter describes experiments in which people think a more expensive drug gives them more pain relief than a cheaper drug; of course, in the experiment, it's the same thing.

That's more of a US phenomenon: for Viv and his daughter needing emergency service, he's unlikely to know the price tag or even to have thought about it and any pain relief prescribed for her has no differential pricing cues. Perhaps Viv can tell us- but affordability and cost probably didn't get even a moment's attention during his daughter's whirlwind treatment to get her home by tomorrow. I'm fairly sure Viv commented on that Commonwealth study that put the NHS first in the free world, so that's a model worth emulating IMHO: do we really want parents worrying about price or whether her treatment is expensive enough to represent quality when she is about to disappear into the OR?