"Hospitals practice medicine in drastically different ways, and the higher-spending ones don't seem to generate any better results than those that spend less. Because of third-party insurance and other distortions, though, the market doesn't punish the inefficient hospitals.... [A new study] found that hospitals with higher survival rates net of the cost of treatment were rewarded with more patients.... The team also found that the variation in survival rates was more important in driving market share than the variation in cost was. In other words, patients seem to seek out hospitals with better survival rates but not ones with lower costs."