Right alongside karaoke industry trends and arcane market-beating tools, the Washington Post devoted much of its Sunday business section to a nice clear explanation of just how tough it is to shop for health insurance - and the sad dollars and cents facts about what living in a society with 47 million uninsured people means for the rest of us. We've written about this topic too - check out our paper on our web site.

The Post had three pieces on purchasing insurance in the individual market - where people go when they don't have insurance on the job - or through COBRA, which is how people can
pay the full tab for job-related insurance after they leave a job for 18 months. Both options are pricey, and the individual market is a tough place to navigate if you've been sick. The paper identifies useful websites from the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, and Consumers Union.

The Color of Money column this week (we linked in our first paragraph) didn't give us the usual tips about how to spend our money wisely. Instead it told us about the people - particularly minorities - for whom health care is an unaffordable luxury. They don't get the care they need at the time they need it - and the rest of us pay when they end up in the emergency room. "If you have insurance, you know how the costs hit your wallet," Michelle Singletary wrote, citing estimates that the yearly hidden tax passed onto the insured could exceed $1500 by 2010.