After multiple months of his research, ProPublica reporter, Marshall Allen, exposed the nation’s health care waste management in his article “What Hospitals Waste.”

Allen narrows his investigation on the hospital systems in Maine. He does not explain the cost of modern day health care, but he focuses his attention on the cost of products that are thrown away and destine for a landfill.

Allen added a statistic to reveal the massive amount of supplies that goes to waste. He quoted “In 2012 the National Academy of Medicine estimated the U.S. heath care system squandered $765 billion a year, more than the entire budget of the Defense Department.”

Allen’s main storyline details the humanitarian actions of 65-year-old Elizabeth McLellan and her team at the non-profit organization, Partners for World Health. McLellan, who is a retired registered nurse, created Partners for World Health ten years ago after she was disappointed in seeing the expensive waste thrown away at her hospital.

McLellan’s organization has four warehouses in Maine that collect and store $20 million worth of donated supplies from hospitals and old patient families.

With these supplies, Partners for World Health, ships containers overseas to Syria, Greece, and Uganda. Each container usually consists of 15,000 pounds of supplies, with an estimated valued around $250,000 each.

Allen reached out to hospital officials and they “either declined to comment or, sometimes sheepishly, said some of the waste was unavoidable.”

Allen ends his article by urging President Trump and Congress to focus their attention on finding a more cost effective way to run medical care and not to focus on providing assistance for people who can’t afford the high costs.