The scene is a doctor's office about a dozen years ago.

Now have you been here before?

No, I haven't.

So what kind of do for you today?

Well, I'm thinking of getting hip surgery,

and when I saw the hip doctor,

he said my blood pressure was high.

These are the voices of the two people who were in that office.

They were reading the transcript in a studio.

Well, I'm thinking of getting hip surgery to take care of my son,

so I was probably nervous about it. You know, I have been putting it off.

Have you seen the orthopedist?

Well, they are kind of the voices of the two people who were in that office because one of them the patient was an actor playing a role and when this scene originally took place the doctor didn't know that.

The original visit was one of hundreds of times that researchers in Chicago sent fake patients,

actors, into real doctor's offices, wired up for sound.

The idea was to see what really goes on in the doctor's office. In particular, the researchers

wanted to know how well doctors really listen to their patients. Each fake patient

had a backstory, a story that if the doctor found it out, would totally change their idea of the right next step for that patient.

Each time, the actor would drop a clue.

The question was, how well are doctors catching the backstory? How well are they really listening to us?

This is an arm and a leg, a show about the cost of health care. I'm Dan Weissman.

And whether you think about the cost of health care as dollars and cents or in more human terms.

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