Around the Mediverse: June 28, 2010

The unusual delay since the last edition of “Around the Mediverse” means that this one features a higher-than-normal number of…

Fun tidbits, health-related and otherwise, from around the ‘tubes:

• SBM gives us a peek behind the curtain of how the FDA decides whether drugs should be available over-the-counter instead of by prescription only.

• Hit & Run, on the other hand, shows us what vendors have to do in order to have their brownies approved by the Pentagon.  I honestly thought it was a joke… I was wrong.  This is the sort of thing that the OSS recommended to those agents infiltrating enemy governments.  Seriously.

• David Williams at the Health Business Blog talks about the PPACA’s mental health parity requirement, and how it might end up driving evidence-based managed-care from insurers.  InsureBlog points out, though, that the regulations mean that mental health “parity” is actually anything but.  Insurers may well be forced to treat mental health care more generously than other covered services.

• On the subject of evidence, Hit & Run discusses scientific denialism of both left- and right-wing political flavours.

• Edwin Leap tells a tale of government/regulatory burdens to hiring by a small business… specifically, his medical practice.

• Richard Posner discusses whether asset-price bubbles, like the housing bubble of the mid-2000s, can be explained by rational behaviour on the part of market participants.

• The Placebo Journal Blog points out that government programs that enlist others to root out physician wrongdoing promise monetary rewards and bounties, whereas a new program that enlists physicians to root out drug company wrongdoing promises to pay whistleblowers… well, you’ll see.

• With so much of California’s fiscal situation being driven by out-of-control public sector pensions, you’d think that they would be focused on getting the best money managers to get them the best possible return on the pension fund instead of worrying about how many CalPERS money managers are women or minorities.

• Can anti-market regulation be harnessed for a pro-market climate change response?  A modest proposal in that vein.

• Greg Mankiw reports that some Japanese men are too sexy for their equities, too sexy for commodities, too sexy for corporates… oh yeah…

• Buy your own journalist!  Well, not really.  More like targeted micro-charity for investigative reporting.  I like this model better than the FTC’s.

• A series of side-splitting Marxist-Socialist jokes.

• What would “Around the Mediverse” be without a tale of ridiculous litigation?  The propofol litigation, however, could have real adverse consequences for those patients needing anesthesia now that one of its manufacturers has withdrawn from the US market.  See Great Zs, Overlawyered, and Skeptical OB for details.

• Dr. Wes discusses some of the often-overlooked biases inherent to the way medical research is conducted, and what it might mean for the wide applicability of results.

• What do patients think of evidence-based medicine?  More importantly, what does government think about it… forget “Mammogate,” let’s talk pseudo-science and quackery in the health reform bill!

• Jason Shafrin points out that when measures of income inequality are adjusted to include health insurance benefits, the standard narrative about widening inequality changes.

• MLRs, what are they good for?  David Williams and Reason have interesting, unorthodox takes on the question.

• Rounding out this week’s selection, Dr. Rich has an unorthodox take on a hot-button issue… this one being the appropriate nature of the relationship between physicians and pharmaceutical companies.  It’s a perspective that I haven’t seen well-elucidated elsewhere, so it’s well worth reading the full thing.