How do you select your Surgeon ?

Why Bill Clinton is alive & Steve Jobs is not ?

It depends how do you select your surgeon and Hospital.

Assuming you are sufficiently rich and powerful how do you hire the best finder to find the best ?

As per information available in public domain:
Steve Jobs was diagnosed with Pancreatic tumour and was advised the only mode available -removal of tumour, the earlier the better. There was metastasis in Liver but curable.
Steve tried alternate therapy for 9 month before yielding to surgeon’s scalpel. But finally when he took his private Jet to Memphis ( the center with shortest waiting period in these situations and statistically the best ) for a Liver transplant, he was 9 month late. He had already tumour deposit in peritoneum.

Had he been anyone other than CEO of Apple, the Liver would have been allotted to next person in waiting but he was Steve Jobs. He got it and died 2.5 years after the transplant.

He selected the statistically best hospital (Of course from Insurance website ), got what he wanted rather than what he needed and didnot survive.
…
In 2004, when Bill Clinton wanted a Hospital for Multiple Coronary Block requiring complex cardiac surgery, his finders selected the hospital that had highest mortality for such operation.

Why did Clinton picked this hospital & this surgeon and survived ?

The intention to treat.

In US, if the survival statistics of a center is poor, it is under probation and soon insurance will take it out of coverage. If my hospital does not take up any risk cases, I shall have the healthiest statistics ( Zero mortality ). That does not make me the best in the field. Clinton’s people managed to figure it out that this hospital with the highest mortality was actually having the experiece of taking up the most difficult and high risk cases. Hence worth trying.

It turned out to be enough to keep him alive.

( Medical Note: Bill Clinton was an unusually risky heart patient.
This is the third time he had to be operated as one of the bypass grafts from an operation five years ago became obstructed.

He had a very bad food habit, hectic lifestyle and family history of heart attack.
He had QUADRUPLE coronary artery bypass surgery in 2004 and later developed rare complications affecting his lungs that required another operation six months later.)

Being two time president of US, he could have gone to the statistically safest hospital. But he chose the opposite. Why ?

His why was enough to keep him alive today.