Does anyone check their medical bills anymore?

I’m sure you’ve heard of Resveratrol. It’s what “nutritional experts are now calling the anti-aging miracle of the century,” according to an ad for the supplement.

Resveratrol is based on the magical anti-oxidant in red wine. You take it and suddenly you’re awesome. I’m not quite sure what it does.

But what I do know is that if it comes from red wine, it can’t be that rare. Yet CBS’s Jim Axelrod found that a pharmacy in Los Angeles filled a Resveratrol prescription costing how much?

“For a one month supply, $44,707,” Axelrod said.

That would be fine if it came with a free BMW or at least a Rolex. But it didn’t.

Even weirder, the same pharmacy was selling a bottle of the same Resveratrol over the counter without a prescription.

“Which raises an even more puzzling question: why does the over-the-counter Resveratrol cost just $157?”

Let me take a wild guess. Insurance is paying for it and the pharmacy figures no one is going to bother to look at the bill. Axelrod asked Dr. Jeff Blumberg &#8212 an expert on supplements &#8212 if he could explain the price. It turns out he could.

“For $44,000-a-month for a dietary supplement; I can’t imagine what it could be other than a scam,” Blumberg said.

Even if it is a scam, that would have to be one stupid insurance company to pay a $40,000 markup.

Here’s my idea: a bounty system. If you catch an insurance company paying a pharmacy a $40,000 markup on your prescription, the pharmacy has to turn the $40,000 over to you. That would get me to read my bill.