For that matter, I remember quite a few comments by the media about Michelle Obama and her Wardrobe-by-Target. Complimentary, for the most part, but still quite a few comments.

Of course, to hear about them, you'd have to have read a newspaper.

I'd just like to see her go on the Daily Show and face Jon Stewart. That'll do just fine.

At 21, shouldn't she be able to handle that herself without her dad stepping in to take over?

Reporting facts - BBC News style - is great. Editorializing is fine too. Where we run into problems is with organizations like Fox News that do the latter but present it to their viewers as the former.

During the current debates a lot of people keep talking about how bad the taxes are in countries with "socialized medicine". Let's take the UK as an example. I'll compare the tax burden on someone making USD 80,000 and GBP 50,000 - I know they're not completely comparable, but its a rough note. I'm ignoring a lot of minor taxes/fees here.

The US individual pays $16,188 in federal income taxes and $6,120 in FICA/Medicare taxes. This gives them a take home pay of $57,692. Their employer also pays $6,120 in FICA/Medicare taxes, for a total cost of $86,120.

The UK individual pays £9,930 in income tax, and £4,258 in NI (national insurance). This gives them a take home pay of £35,812. Their employer pays £5,668 in NI, for a total cost of £55,668.

Let's convert those UK numbers into their USD variants at the same rate, just for fun:

The UK individual pays $15,888 in income tax, $300 less than their US counterpart, and $6,812 in NI, or $692 more. This gives them a take home pay of $57,299, $392 less than the US guy (only 1/2 of 1% less). Their employer pays $9,068 in NI, for a total cost of $89,068, which is $2,948 or 3.5% more than the US cost.

The big difference here, of course, is that the US employee still has absolutely no health care. Reasonable coverage for a single person in good health easily consumes that $3,000 difference - and that's ignoring any family obligations, what happens when they're laid off, etc.

Hmm. Same cost, more benefits... not quite the way its presented in the US media, is it?

Now, there are taxes other than payroll taxes, and many of them are indeed higher in the UK. Let's look at it another way.

The total tax burden in the UK is about 37% of GDP, compared to about 27% in the US, but the UK numbers include comprehensive healthcare and the US ones do not. In the US, healthcare costs (including insurance company overhead) run about 17.5% of GDP (some of which is government covered, but less than half). If you add in 9% to represent a conservative estimate of non-government-paid healthcare costs in the US, then you get within 1%-of-GDP of the UK... again, pretty much the same cost.

Why do we insist on the myth that we're paying less for more?

As a triathlete and USAT member, I have to take exception with the quote from the article:

... saw 14 deaths in official USA Triathlon-sponsored events between January 2006 and September 2008 ...

Isn't that a little sensationalist? First, that's a 33 month period. In 2007 alone, there were over 1.1 million participants in USAT-sanctioned triathlons. Considering that each triathlon takes several hours to finish (let's use 2 hours as a random conservative average between sprint/olympic/longer events), that's 250 man-years of triathlon racing per year, or 685 man-years of races over that 33 month period.

14 deaths is not a completely unreasonable number over any 685-man-year sampling, just from unknown undiagnosable conditions.

You might want to suggest that your brother in law check out Administaff. That's what we use for our small business - "reasonable" rates for group insurance, since you're part of a 50K+ pool. I think that we pay around $7000/yr for great family coverage (best plan choice, low deductible with high maximums), and its not much more to buy in than most payroll/hr services, if you commit to buying into their insurance pool.

But its sad. Without companies like that (and their associated fees), health insurance for small businesses is pretty much out of reach (and they're not available for companies with under 7-10 employees). It would be almost impossible for me to break off and do my own thing, try to live the American dream by starting a small company without external funding - the health care costs could cripple me. That's one of the biggest social costs of not having universal coverage like all other 1st world countries provide. How many breakthroughs are we missing out on because fewer and fewer people will take a risk?

I don't mind sacrificing my savings - done it before, twice, in pursuit of my own business. Now that I've got a child though I'm not about to risk her long-term health for it.

That's the health epidemic, as far as food is concerned. The reason that it ties into the obesity discussion is that processed food is often (but not always) more calorie dense than unprocessed food; we therefore need less volume to reach our caloric requirements, but generally don't take in that lesser volume and, therefore, take in more energy than we need. So its indirect, but still a factor.