Water Cooler Conversations . . .

. . . I would have liked to have overhead yesterday:

The one inside the FDA safety department after learning that the former head of China's drug regulatory agency faced execution on corruption charges.

The one inside former FDA commissioner Lester Crawford's office (wherever that is these days) after hearing the same thing. (Crawford resigned in a conflict-of-interest scandal.)

The one inside the offices of America's Health Insurance Plans (the insurance industry trade association) after presidential aspirant Barack Obama proposed a National Health Insurance Exchange -- a form of national regulation of their industry.

On that latter point, this is something the Democrats in Congress can move on right away if they're really interested in showing they are interested in health care reform. We've never had national regulation of the insurance industry in the U.S. It's handled on a state-by-state basis. By imposing national health insurance rules that would forbid companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions and establish so-called community rating pricing schemes that pool risk across entire populations (probably by state or region), Congress could show that America is indeed ready for health care reform.