By Evan Falchuk

A round-up of interesting things found on the web:

1. Joe Lieberman wants you dead.

Well, maybe not you, in particular.  But Ezra Klein can’t figure out why Senator Joe Lieberman opposes the current version of the Senate health care reform bill.  So, he has reflected on the point concluded that it is because he

seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.

Well, ok, then.  Health care seems to make people say some crazy things.

2.  Jonathan Bush doesn’t like Congress.

Babies are enjoying a renaissance.  First, they day trade.  Now, they seem to have access to Israeli-manufactured submachine guns:

I still have to keep going to Washington and sucking up. . . . Because the problem is when you have a baby with an Uzi, right, they might accidentally mow you down. But here’s the thing . . . they’re brilliant people. It’s just that the idea of a market in health care never occurred to them.

But the CEO of Athena Health makes some interesting points.  He doesn’t think the reform proposals in Washington are a good idea, but says that companies like his stand to make a lot of money implementing whatever it is that is passed.  It’s a colorful interview that is worth reading.

3.  Massachusetts businesses are worried that federal reform will undermine the Massachusetts reforms of 2006

For all the talk about how bad the Massachusetts health care reforms are, a coalition of the most important business groups are worried federal law might undermine them.  So they wrote a letter to  Senator Kennedy’s (temporary) replacement Senator Paul Kirk asking him to make sure this doesn’t happen:

Our hope was that national health reform efforts would compliment, rather than undermine, our state efforts. In recent weeks, we have grown increasingly concerned that many provisions contained in the health reform bills before Congress could actually undo the success of Massachusetts health reform by making coverage more expensive. . . . .Employers cannot absorb this increased cost, particularly when our health care costs are already among the highest in the nation.

The business groups are especially concerned with taxes on health insurers and so-called “Cadillac” plans, but also raise a number of other issues.  Their biggest concern is cost-containment and they are worried that the Senate bill isn’t going to address that problem.

4.  The UK’s Health Insurance and Protection Magazine featured an interesting story on Best Doctors

As I noted after my recent visit to our European headquarters, different countries may have different health care systems, but the experience of being sick or treating patients is very similar:

The fact that medical treatment varies locally and internationally is well-established.  In the UK, mastectomy rates for breast cancer patients range from 36% to 53% between regions, and between surgeons from 19% to 92%. . . . [T]hese examples serve as useful reminders that doctors operate within a complex context. While national guidelines exist, there remain difficult choices to be made.

Bottom line: everyone wants more control over their health care.

5.  Tinker!

At Healthcare etc., Marya Zilberberg says good things happen when we question authority and try things for ourselves:

People, we are no better informed than our ancestors banging their drums to ward off solar eclipse. . . . If we want true innovation, we need to get back to our tinkering roots. Learn to darn your socks, help your child to read and teach her to tinker, so that she can stay curious. Question “experts”: most of the time the mountains of complexity behind their concepts are useless or unnecessary, or created for the purpose of exclusion by obfuscation. Throw open these black boxes and shine a light in them. Play with stuff. Play with ideas. Tinker!

I’m all in favor of her advice.  Except the the part about sock darning.

UPDATE 12/15/09: This was cool and came out late yesterday:  My brother and his co-creators of the show Glee received 2 nominations for awards from the Writer’s Guild of America.

UPDATE #2: And they got four Golden Globe nominations.  Not a bad day.