At a time when all but the poorest of the poor seem to have cell phones, I would have thought payphones to be a thing of the past – a quaint Twentieth Century anachronism.

But it turns out I was wrong.

According to the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, which regulates such things, there are, as of 2009, some 282 functioning payphones spread across Manchester, NH, including what is arguably the coolest payphone in the city - an old school British phone booth located near the City Hall Annex on Market Street:

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Last Thursday, I had the privilege of meeting briefly with Gov. John Lynch shortly before he gave his State of the State address. He was speaking to the Leadership Greater Manchester Class of 2010, of which I am a part, regarding the challenges facing the state. And as one might expect, heath care is right up there near the top of the list.

Gov. Lynch, whose wife Susan is a pediatrician in Concord, NH, told us that one of the reasons health care costs are so high is that consumers often have no idea how much the same procedure might cost at different medical facilities. But even if we did, and even if the outcomes for a given procedure are pretty much the same everywhere (they generally are, the gov said) there’s really no incentive for those of us with insurance to opt to have that procedure done at the facility with the lowest cost.

Curious to know how Manchester, NH, hospitals and medical facilities compare cost-wise, I researched the cost of several procedures at NHHealthCost.org, a medical cost comparison website run by the New Hampshire Insurance Department and the Commissioner's Advisory Committee on Health Insurance. In doing my research, I chose to look at costs for the uninsured (who often pay more for the same procedure than those of us with insurance) as a general guide.

(I chose not to look at the costs for those who are insured as the many variables involved - insurance company, annual deductible, plan type, etc. - make it difficult to determine an “average” procedure cost.)

On the preventative health side, I found

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