When my wife and I were in Delhi earlier this year, she came down with a stomach bug that left her bad dehydrated. In the middle of the night, I took her to the nearest emergency room, which happened to be at the Centre for Spinal Injuries. We walked in, she was seen immediately, and put on a drip. While she was getting her IV fluids and antibiotic, I walked over to the desk and paid the bill, which came to $18. Less than two hours later, she was rehydrated and well enough to return to our hotel. The doctors were efficient, the nurses were friendly, the facility was simple and clean, the treatment was effective, and there were no bureaucratic hoops to jump through. I wish emergency medicine was like that in this country.

I fail to see the relevance of methods used by the Indian construction workers, other than the standard oh-how-exotic reaction. And as for contaminated blood, dirty needles, etc., I think the point of the article is that the quality of health care in India is very uneven, and getting good care requires knowing where to look, living in a big city, and being middle class.

By the way, Ms. Viswanatha, you really should not have eaten the salad, or drunk water that wasn't bottled or filtered. Even middle-class Indians know that. What were you trying to prove? Sheesh. ABCDs, I swear.

KitchenGirl: For the poor in India, high-quality health-care is hard to find; Viswanatha's article is quite clear on that point, and I don't think she's suggesting that the Indian model is ideal for the American poor. She is, however, pointing out that by following three interconnected strategies (cutting out middlemen and profit-driven insurance companies, keeping doctor's salaries at levels that are tied to what patients of varying income-levels can afford to pay, and not foisting unnecessary tests and procedures on patients), you can have a market-driven health-care system that is generally more affordable to the middle class.

Robob, on heart surgery, this might be of interest: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/02/india.heart/index.html?iref=werecommend

Like practically all services in India, health care is available on a two-tier basis (with further levels within those tiers). In private hospitals located in the bigger cities, you can get excellent care for reasonable prices that middle-class Indians can afford to pay. In private hospitals you can also get more expensive care that is still affordable by American standards, and which drives medical tourism to India.

If you're poor or rural or both, then you have to rely upon the lower tier of health care: government hospitals. These are free, and the quality of care ranges from atrocious (often), through mediocre (usually), to first-rate (if you're lucky - see http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/2-hour_surgery_saves_miracle_baby.php). But anybody can go to a government hospital and be treated for free. In other words, a genuine public option, although not a very good one.

The argument that medical care is cheaper is India because everything is cheaper in India does not entirely hold water. Ms. Viswanatha paid $50 for her hospital visit. I've paid less, also at a private hospital in Delhi. A middle-class Indian salary - say, that of an university professor - is about $500 a month, so the cost of an ordinary emergency-room visit works out to less than 10 percent of your monthly salary. On an emergency-room visit in California, where I was eyeballed by a doctor for all of five minutes and subjected to tests that were probably unnecessary, the bill exceeded $1000, which is about 25 percent of a professor's monthly take-home pay in this country. Hip reconstruction surgery? $1000, or twice your monthly salary, in a private hospital in India, but $13,000, or three times your salary, in America.

There's no doubt that things are generally cheaper in India. But that alone does not explain why medical care is disproportionately more expensive in the US. The explanation needs to take into account that health care in America is a bigger, more elaborate, and better protected racket than it is in India, involving a range of powerful political interests that include the insurance companies, the drug companies, the AMA, malpractice lawyers and our beloved Conciliator in Chief in Washington.

Dear Mr. Greenwald, without the state of permanent war, we would have to redefine just what kind of state this is and what it is we do for a living as a society. If the assembly lines for military hardware shut down, what would we manufacture and peddle? What would the workers eat, and where would the CEOs make their millions? If the bases are closed and military recruitment is curtailed, what would our fine semi-educated high school graduates do with themselves? Without a world full of bad guys to fight, how would we justify our claim to being the "leader of the free world"? It's a little late now for peace. Should have listened to Eisenhower, if not Orwell.

she certainly seems most inclined to believe the fourth.

that the authorities have released the identities and photos of the accused men, who are the victims in this case, and are still protecting the identity of the accuser.

Broadsheet, by the way, is a disgrace - no small thanks to articles like this one.

Is it really necessary to give this guy an even bigger platform by putting him on the front page? First TIME, now Salon? This is precisely the kind of star treatment that he feeds on, and it reverses the gains of the recent boycott of his program by advertisers.