The Anti-Placebo Effect
With public calls for HMO reform sounding rather like Salome demanding John the Baptist's head, most policy makers favor some form of managed care regulation. But a recent issue brief from the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) illustrates the problem with drawing conclusions about HMO quality of care based on public opinion polls.

HSC looked at data from two linked studies and discovered that almost twenty-five percent of respondents "do not correctly know whether they are in an HMO or not." Further analysis revealed "Privately insured consumers who thought they were in HMOs rated their care lower…than did those who believed they were covered by other types of insurance."

The HSC urged policy makers, and others who choose among types of insurance, to include objective measures about the quality of clinical care in their deliberations. As for HMOs—too bad it's so much easier to get a bad reputation than to get rid of one.

Scared Straight
After creating a Ouija board from a box lunch and a Scrabble game, inmates at the San Jose, California, county jail held séances, reported APBnews.com. Some even thought they were possessed by the devil, said Bryan Peretti, Santa Clara county spokesman. Ouija boards are used to communicate with spirits, who move an indicator device that spells out answers to questions. The prisoners, after summoning "the wrong kinds of spirits," went to the guards for help.

Peretti reports that one man spoke in a strange, deep voice, while others were "afraid, reclusive, just plain strange." One spirit reportedly also tried to encourage violent behavior among the prisoners. "We need to act on something like that," Peretti stated. So officials called a Catholic priest to rid the jail of its unwanted guests. The priest's visit seemed to calm the prisoners. "And they've vowed not to play with Ouija boards again," Peretti said.

Recidivism rates are expected to be low.

Don't Bring Out Your Dead
The cemetery is full in the French Riviera town of Le Lavandou so the mayor, Gil Bernardi, issued a decree: "It is forbidden to anyone who does not have a burial plot to die within town limits."

The crisis has been brewing for several years, according to the Associated Press. A plan to construct a new cemetery near the coast was rejected by a regional court because it violated a law on seashore constructions. The appeal procedure could last up to three years. Bernardi resisted another proposal to locate the cemetery in a nearby rock quarry, which he likened to a "dump" that does not respect the dead.

Approximately forty people die plotless in Le Lavandou each year. There are currently nineteen people awaiting a final resting place. Unable to secure their own plots, they are staying in friends' vaults.

Outlawing behaviors—take Prohibition, for example—does not automatically diminish their occurrence. Will the nearly dead sneak into town for the illicit fun of dying where death is illegal? When asked for comment, Mayor Bernardi said, "No one has died since [I issued the decree] and I hope it stays that way."