Weekend Longforms: Lifesaving FDA employee, pseudoscience, and broker fraud in Florida
January 3, 2026
For the holiday weekend - here are some longform articles for health policy wonks. I was alerted to thel three articles cited here by the StatNews “2025 jealousy list” of stories that their talented writers wished they had written.
A. FDA employee saves a girl with a rare amoebic brain disease
Michael Lewis wrote, as only Michael Lewis can write, a gripping tale of a 5-year-old from Texarkana with new seizures found to have Balamuthia, a rare kind of amoebic brain disease. He weaves together stories of her family, the rare disease explorer who wrote up a case study of successful Balamuthia treatment in California, and the backstory of the FDA employee who helped get an antibiotic not approved in the U.S. to save her life. The article was published in the Washington Post in March, and is collected in his book, Who is Government: the Untold Story of Public Service. The FDA employee, Heather Stone, remains at the FDA; here is a link to the CureID website that she and her team have created to help clinicians find treatments for those with rare diseases.
B. How vaccine skeptics use pseudoscience to sow doubt
Also from the StatNews “2025 jealousy list:” an August article by Jessica Steier in the New York Times on how many of the articles purporting to demonstrate a link between autism and vaccines were written by David Geier, a nonclinician who Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has hired to study the origins of autism. The article uses compelling graphics to demonstrate the circular pattern of citation of shoddy science.
C. Yes, there is fraud in Obamacare enrollments!
Bloomberg Businessweek published “Chasing Big Money With the Health-Care Hustlers of South Florida” in June. Scamming brokers made millions by enrolling ineligible people in Affordable Care Act exchange plans or switching plans, as many as 22 times without a plan member’s permission. There are fancy cars (Buggatis, Bentleys, Lamborghinis and McLarens), fancy jewelry, and armed guards to prevent disgruntled former employees from bringing guns into the office. The insurance agency behind all of this was bankrolled by a major private equity company, which counted state pension funds among its investors. The cursor even turned into an alligator!
On a related topic, here’s a link to my post “The perils of ‘cheap’ insurance’ from November.
Hope you have a great weekend, and best wishes for a happy and healthy new year.
Today’s animal photo:
Snowy Egret, in the Wakodahatchee wetlands, Delray Beach, FL March, 2025
