The monthlong celebration of breast cancer awareness, now known as "Pinktober," kicked off last week when the mailman delivered our family's copy of Sports Illustrated for Kids. On the cover was a pink-clad NFL-er promoting -- along with everyone else -- breast cancer awareness month, or BCAM.

In the middle of 2009, a New Yorker article by Atul Gawande told the puzzling tale of McAllen, Texas, the most expensive city for Medicare recipients to receive medical care in the United States. But what made McAllen puzzling was not that medical costs were high, but that...