... in the US is a bit like asking why a pair of glasses might cost $200 at the optician store, but you can get the same pair off the Internet for $80.

It is all about inefficient systems of distribution. Having no waiting lists for procedures that use expensive machinery means that there is a lot of expensive machinery standing idle a lot of the time.

Countries with national health systems tend to have better advance planning. For example how many births will your state have next year? How many maternity beds are needed, and where? How many people with mental illness will need long term antipsychotic therapy? How much will this cost? National health systems address these questions, but patchwork health systems don't.

The end result is inefficient use of resources.

The obese DO cost a lot , because typically they have a whole slew of diagnoses and health problems, e.g. blood pressure, COPD, CHF, asthma, diabetes, hip and knee problems, gallstones, depression, sleep apnea, and so on, all of which get billed separately, which is not the case in national health care systems. (And I don't care if you are fat and healthy. Just you wait!).

I lived for some years in Bermuda, where health care was financed by mandatory insurance with all employment, plus the government paying for the indigent. The cost of health care there was half the price compared to the US, even though the overall standard of living and wages were HIGHER than the US. The doctors were living very well too.

... CONSTANTLY reporting on right-wing propaganda and carping?

This is a critical time in history and huge events are taking place almost every day, yet instead of explaining to readers what the administration is doing and debating the pros and cons of various courses of action, it seems like half the articles on Salon are devoted to what Rush Limbaugh or John McCain have been saying, even though these guys have NO useful contribution to make and are in fact yesterday's men.

If the general election was only weeks away their opinions might be of some interest, but we are only weeks into a new era, and they are totally irrelevant.

... I don't watch TV.

Everything on TV is propaganda of some type, whether it be financial entertainment, news, sport, sit-coms, chat shows, or whatever.

The only purpose of commercial TV is to deliver an audience to the advertisers at the breaks every few minutes, so really you can get the whole message by recording any show and just fast-forwarding to the commercials.

It seems hilariously funny to TV watchers to have these hideous errors pointed out by Jon Stewart, but only because the basic proposition that TV is propaganda is so widely accepted. No one, but no one is actually shocked. No one will stop watching TV because of this.

I don't think that Democrats want to barbecue Rove and then eat him.

As Rove played the role of Molotov to Bush's Stalin, he was the de facto propaganda minister in the Bush kitchen cabinet and thus was almost certainly complicit in and knowledgeable of numerous crimes.

Since his role is represented in Animal Farm by the character of Squealer, the intention of Democrats is not to eat him, but now that waterboarding has fallen out of fashion, to roast him just enough to make him squeal.

... that corrections in the stock market were supposed to be good, because they give us a chance to buy more shares cheaply and "average down", while over the long run an ever growing human population and an ever growing market for goods and services ensures that company profits and hence stock values will grow.

So surely these immensely wealthy Wall streeters must be salivating at the chance to increase their stock holdings and get even richer. Or alternatively, if they think the Dow will continue to fall, then they can short the market and get even richer.

So it is a win-win situation, no? Wall Street professionals who get all the inside information first get richer, and everybody else gets poorer.

However, although the Dow is in the dumps, the dollar is making significant gains against other currencies and may well make more, since other major economies are in just as bad or worse shape. Does Obama get credit for this too, or is this part of the Bush legacy?

What I would really like to know, is what is the current PERSONAL investment strategy of Wall St. insiders and TV tipsters like that guy who shouts a lot, but I guess they will never tell us. I mean, are they shorting the Dow, or are they buying out of sheer patriotism?

The whole purpose of having an opposition party is to oppose, or at least question and challenge the thinking of the ruling party.

No reason why McCain can't question some parts of some bills.

Of course, the Democrats completely forget that they had a duty to oppose during the Bush dictatorship, and look where that got us!

It seems to me that condoms get very good PR at the expense of various other types of contraception that you hardly hear about these days, like pills, depot provera, and various mechanical devices. Of course condoms are better for CASUAL sex, because they block various contagious conditions, notably AIDS, but there is no reason why monogamous couples who have been tested for infectious conditions should not use any of the other forms of contraception.

Thus it always seems to me that the emphasis on condoms tends to promote a favorable view of casual sex or paid sex, which even in a fairly liberal political environment, is something that you won't find many health educators actively recommending.