What happens to men when they shop for gasoline? How can the same people who ignore grocery store coupons become so maniacal about saving less when filling up the tank? Why is it that they can spend so much time on the Internet mapping out the spots with the lowest prices but can’t be bothered with comparison shopping when buying corn chips?

I don’t claim to be the greatest value shopper, but I don’t make an exception for gas, either. I figure if I save, say, 3 cents a gallon, that works out to about 45 cents when I fill ‘er up. Not to brag, but I find more than that under the car seats each week.

If a woman comes home and boasts about saving 10 bucks at a clothing sale, the husband politely nods and returns to his nongeneric chips. But if one man announces to another that he scored relatively cheap gas, get ready for some serious envy:

“Really? That’s awesome!”

(Chest puffing out) “Yep. Corner of Laurel and Hardy.”

“No way! It was a nickel higher there yesterday! You are The Man!”

“Yeah, well, it’s still a lot cheaper in Chattanooga.”

“My cousin in Casper says it’s …”

And on and on.

Thanks to you, it’s cheaper. Hey, there’s good news on the health care front. Prices are dropping! OK, they’re not dropping, but they’re not rising as fast as they did last year. An analysis from the actuaries at Milliman, a Seattle consulting company that tracks health care costs, notes that prices rose by 7.6 percent from 2007 to 2008. But that’s lower than the 8.4 percent increase from 2003 to 2007.

That’s something, right? Well, reading further along in the analysis you find that the burden on employees has increased. In fact, this cost-shifting meant a 10.1 percent rise in health care spending for workers. That’s the second consecutive year of double-digit increases.

So there you have it. If you’ll just pay more for your health care, the overall costs won’t go up as fast. And if you come up short, you can always check for change between the car seats.

It’s dopey. The public’s reaction to gas prices vs. drug prices is interesting. With gas, we have some of the lowest prices in the world. With drugs, we generally pay the highest prices. With gas, we have to import a lot to meet demand, which raises the price. With drugs, U.S. companies export a lot to meet global demand, yet prices are lower in the importing countries, so we try to reimport the meds. With gas, we call for investigations into price increases that only recently outpaced inflation. With drugs, we merely grumble about costs that have risen much faster than inflation over many years.

With gas, profits make us mad. With drugs, we’re anesthetized.