How well you recover from an illness depends on the doctor that you choose and the hospital in which you're treated. The reason is because there's a tremendous variation in the ways doctors diagnose and treat diseases and the equipment that various hospitals have available.

Dr, Lawrence Horowitz, former director of the U.S. Senate subcommittee on health, states: "Women have a 70% chance of having their uteruses surgically removed by the age of 75 simply because they live in a particular city in Maine where doctors consistently opt for surgery rather than other options.

"Women in other cities in the exact same state have only a 20% chance of this. And such variations hold true across the United States for many procedures."

- USA Today, Sept 22, 1988