Apparently some things do not pass through with ease:
When doctors took an X-ray they were amazed. There was an enormous mass in his stomach. The metal in there weighed 5.4 kilos, enough to force his stomach down between his hips, which it did not do.
Here is the X-ray image. Unhappily the hunger artist did not survive the corrective surgery.
Via Medpundit.
For the FDA it appears that ‘B’ stands for babies. Why else would the FDA ignore the 23-4 vote of its scientific advisory panel and continue to withhold the morning after drug ‘Plan B’ from the over the counter retail market?
Well, perhaps babies and, as Mark Kleiman suggests, politics:
I’m prepared to bet that the FDA will eventually do the right thing. But how many unwanted pregnancies, leading to how many abortions, will result from this obviously political decision?
Yep, politics, and one more example of why such decisions should not be in the hands of political hacks.
Mark also says:
Once again, we can expect a deafening silence from the libertarians, whose sincerity about personal liberty I keep doing my level best not to doubt.
I don’t know if there will be a deafening silence or not. However, I suspect that most real libertarians not only would object to this decision but also argue that the FDA should not have any say in the matter at all, that it should not even exist as a government function.
As Kevin Drum notes the US medical care market is not a free one:
The United States really doesn’t have a free market in healthcare at all; in fact, it’s just a bizarre melange of jury rigged policies that seem to provide the worst of all worlds. We don’t get the universal coverage and bargaining power of a single-payer system, but we also don’t have the competitiveness and price pressure of a true free market system.
Kevin then goes on to ask:
So what, then, is the big problem with simply trying to rationalize the system?
By which he means implement a federal single payer system or more specifically universal health care. And he then argues:
In fact, if the system were well designed � never a betting proposition, I admit � overall costs might even be a little less.
Well, he is right if congress is going to design it you don’t want to bet on it being rational or anywhere close to efficient.
I had actually thought for an irrational moment that when he suggested “simply trying to rationalize the system” that he might have really meant what he was saying and been about to suggest beginning to move down the long road to a free market for medical care. Oh well.
Tyler Cowan takes a look at medical care outsourcing:
More Americans and other nationals are traveling to Thailand for health care. A heart bypass costs 8-15K instead of 25-35K in the U.S. and arguably the service is better. In addition to a good doctor they will give you limo pick-up and convalescence time in a hotel. You can get a nose job for less than a quarter of the price. If you are uninsured, lightly insured, or stuck in a Canadian queue, why not go abroad for your care?
Hmmmm…, I wonder at what point your insurance company will pay your travel costs?
For those of you with the kitchen cleaning mentality of a group of college guys rooming together Here’s the good news :
Chuck Gerba, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona who has studied bacteria in home kitchens, said that he found that people who had the cleanest-looking kitchens were often the dirtiest. Because “clean” people wipe up so much, they often end up spreading bacteria all over the place. The cleanest kitchens, he said, were in the homes of bachelors, who never wiped up and just put their dirty dishes in the sink.
Read the rest of the article for the bad news and to have a few current myths blown away.