When the doctor walked in to announce that Susan’s’ condition was not responding to treatment, Susan, naturally, was overwhelmed with joy.

“I'm rich!” she cried, for she knew that she would not run out of money.

In her excitement, however, she miscalculated, and the unfortunate convergence of maximizing every cent she had earned in an exuberant spending spree and living too long—several months longer than expected—led to her depleting her entire savings. She died, destitute, in an underfunded hospital in a poorly maintained section of the city while several doctors tended to a woman who had been stabbed by her mother and the receptionists attempted to talk down a man making a bomb threat over the phone.