Welcome to the September 6, 2007 edition of health wonk review.

I discovered, to my considerable surprise, that I had been tagged to host Health Wonk Review. To be honest, I have no idea how that happened (I’ve never submitted a post to the review, and didn’t volunteer). The submissions rolling into my inbox over the past few weeks were therefore confusing, and it was only a day or two ago that I had the dawning realization that I was on the hook. But being a can-do kinda guy, I rose to the challenge, so here it is.

Thankfully, the Blog Carnival folks made life easier by assembling all the submissions in one place, making the job immensely easier.

So the long and short of is: this will be neither clever, nor fancy, nor terribly erudite — but there’s some great stuff in the submissions, so check them out:

Shaheen Lakhan presents Medicare Begins its “Never Pay” Category posted at GNIF Brain Blogger.

Karen Halls presents How Do I Avoid Drinking Too Much Alcohol? posted at Addiction Recovery Blog, saying, “If you are trying to prevent yourself from drinking too much alcohol at social gatherings, here are a few ways that you can keep your alcohol intake under control.”

Henry Stern, LUTCF, CBC presents No Docs in This Box posted at InsureBlog, saying, “Retail medical clinics are popping up all over. They’re an inexpensive alternative to a full-blown practice or the ER, but “traditional” providers are crying foul. InsureBlog’s Bob Vineyard explores the hypocrisy.”

Warren Wong presents How To Overcome Fear And The Obstacles It Creates posted at Personal Development for INTJs, saying, “Are there things you are afraid of? Here’s how to overcome your fears, permanently, and overcome all the obstacles that fear creates.”

Alvaro Fernandez presents Brain Fitness Program 2.0, MindFit, and much more on Brain Training posted at SharpBrains, saying, “Review and commentary on several New York Times articles related to “brain training””

Shahid N. Shah presents Make sure your online SaaS vendors are appliance-capable posted at The Healthcare IT Guy, saying, “Shahid over at The Healthcare Guy provides some sage advice on how you should not count on “software in the cloud” for your mission critical healthcare IT needs without a backup plan. With big outages from Microsoft, Skype, eBay, and PayPal recently making headlines it’s a great time to make sure you’re protected.”

Jason Shafrin presents What are the Major Clinical Pathways to Disability posted at Healthcare Economist, saying, “This post reviews an NBER working paper discussing findings regarding how the elderly move from healthy to disabled states. Hopefully, this data can be used to aid health service providers on how to better prevent and treat disabilities which occur in old age.”

Richard Eskow presents Medical Justice League of America posted at The Sentinel Effect, saying, “Richard Eskow examines “Medical Justice.” a new service group that provides “gag order” forms to dissuade patients from reviewing their docs online, and also promises to “relentlessly” fight med mal lawsuits.”

Michael D. Horowitz presents What are the real savings in medical tourism? posted at MedTripInfo, saying, “An analysis of the costs of hip replacement in Costa Rica demonstrate that Americans can save 80% or more by going there.”

Dean presents Top Ten Fast Food Meals That Make You Fat posted at Mr. Cheap Stuff, saying, “Avoid these fast food meals.”

Daniel Goldberg presents On Epstein v. Relman (& Public Health Policy) posted at Medical Humanities.

David E. Williams presents Abusing the orphan drug law to rip off customers posted at Health Business Blog. Questcor Pharmaceuticals has announced “a new strategy and business model for H.P. Acthar Gel(R).” Translation: the company has obtained orphan drug status for a product that has been used for decades –including for the orphan indication of Infantile Spasms– and is raising the price 20-fold, from about $1000 per vial to $20,000 per vial.

Anthony Wright finishes up with a submission which snuck in this morning:

Small Business of California, Unite!

A spotlight on a poll of small business owners, showing that they are not reflexively opposed to health reforms, as they are sometimes portrayed. The scientific poll casts some doubt on “membership surveys” of some national organizations.

And a last minute shameless plug: for those interested in an in-depth look at the insanity which poses as our health-care system, check out The Maze — a multi-part series of posts on our billing and coding system, federal and third party carriers, and thoughts on fixing this mess.

That concludes this edition. I may have missed a few submissions, due to the last-minute scramble — my apologies for any such oversights.

Submit your blog article to the next edition of health wonk reviewusing our carnival submission form.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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