Treasure Islands tells us that tax havens are much larger and much more destructive than most might realize, yet at the same time enjoy much more unofficial and formal support from governments in advanced economies than many of us want to believe.

As you can see in this helpful chart from the Kaiser Family Foundation, America pays much more for health care than any other first-world country.

There are a lot of false ideas or very minor explanations that are overstated to try to justify why we pay so much.

Health insurance is extremely complex and people just don’t have the knowledge about how an insurance policy works and the statistical likelihood of developing medical problems to know what is the best deal for them. This task is made even more difficult by the fact that insurance companies have a huge profit incentive to make their products difficult to understand (for example, hiding the cost of care to give them the lower sticker price on the exchanges).

Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak’s looted billions — indeed, his ability to loot billions as representatives of our government scoff at activists who call such looting illegal — plays a fundamental role in our house of cards economy. And, given that we reward obedient client dictators with permission to loot their country, it plays a fundamental role in American hegemony in this world.

As a July 1, 2009 WikiLeaks cable released by Norway’s Aftenposten makes clear, the U.S. and Switzerland included the acceptance of three Gitmo detainees and a settlement in a suit accusing UBS of harboring tax cheats — along with an effort to shut down a Swedish company’s business with Iran — in negotiations “resolving all issues between our countries.” Favors involved in this deal may go deeply both ways: among those reportedly involved in the UBS scandal were American politicians.

In the race to see which would be discounted more quickly, Cheney’s freedom won out over cheap Chinese toys at Christmas season: the final price for Cheney’s freedom is $35 million.