19 January 2021 - In his terrific book, The Great American Drug Deal, Peter Kolchinsky talks about one of the most common surgical procedures – hip replacements. 

There are over 400,000 such procedures done in the U.S. annually. In fact, given my age, I now have a handful of friends who have had at least one hip done. 

Hip replacement surgeries were first carried out in the 1940s and, while the methodology has improved, the procedure is essentially the same today and costs about $40,000 (not including extended nursing and rehabilitation). This surgery cost the U.S. healthcare system about $16 billion in 2019 - a figure that will undoubtedly continue to grow.

Read Forbes article