You guys may already have this info (since I am late to this party), but I looked up info on the whipple procedure and its cost at John Hopkins. It costs about $26,204 according to the John Hopkins newspaper. See this link for more details.
http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/janmar95/jan0995/brief.html
Could you send this information over to the CURRENT edition of the DUmmie FUnnies, the one about the Grand DUmmie "Skinner"?
It looks like this article might be about 10 years old, judging from the URL. How much could we figure the cost of this procedure to go up in 10 years?