It's so bad it goes right past good and back to bad.

Actually the way they find planets outside of our solar system is by measuring the "wobble" caused by the planets gravity as it orbits the star. Thus, it is much easier to find large planets with more gravity and planets that are closer to the star with shorter, more observable orbital periods.

There's plenty of legal American citizens who can't pay for their ER bills.

Also, the gravel roads help them to justify the SUVs and pickups they own to drive back and forth to work.

"I'm so glad I have four wheel drive, or I'd never make it out of my neighborhood. It's not even paved!"

Wow. Quit sleeping through your econ classes.

Charging 3 different customers different prices for the same product is called discrimination. Great if you can get away with it (sometimes called a senior citizen or student discount), but not how most businesses operate.

The grandparent was correct, and you pretty much agree with the post in your second paragraph there. Text message market should be in perfect competition. Text messages from Sprint are exactly the same as those from Verizon, they are perfect substitutes. In a correctly functioning market, market forces will push commodities with perfect substitutes down to the marginal cost. Marginal cost is the price it takes to create the last widget, or in this case text message. As per the article, text messages cost almost nothing, therefore, the price of text messages should be almost nothing. The fact that this is not the case indicates that the market is not functioning correctly.