While You Were Raking Leaves

An uncharacteristically quiet autumn weekend for industry that we hope gave you the opportunity to get outside and enjoy the characteristically peaceful sounds of plastic tubes strapped to roaring V6 engines.

It was better than staying in to watch football anyway. But if you were that unlucky: while you were watching your team tie (in the ugliest way) ...

• The Boston Globe reveals "the best-kept secret in Massachusetts medicine" in a lengthy piece about the regions hospitals: insurance companies pay elite institutions 15-60% more than the rest of Mass' hospitals for doing the same work--often by the same physicians.
  
• Survival of the fittest for SF's biotech companies, says the Chronic.
• A key question for payors, post-JUPITER: if there is a substantial benefit for patients without high LDL but with high CRP, can it be achieved with generic statins? The Pink Sheet weighs in here.
  
• The Wall St Journal looks ahead to Wednesday's Novartis research update, the Big Pharma's first in two years.
• More JUPITER: What do megapixels and meteors have to do with everyone's favorite statin study? Let Ben Goldacre explain.
• Solvay shelves obesity compound: and another one bites the dust.
  
• And finally ... the indispensible WSJ Health Blog throws another name into the ring for FDA commish. So deliciously truthy.
  

image from flickr user A-wix used under a creative commons license