Speaking as (free) customer of 23 and Me, the genetic testing company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder, I can see why it has just slashed its prices.

The New York Times reports this morning that 23 and Me is cutting the price for people who want to spit into a laboratory tube, send it off in the mail, and receive some genetic information about themselves.

Instead of $999 per test, the test price is now $399. Linda Avey, Ms Wojcicki’s co-founder, says that the privately-owned Silicon Valley company wants to entice more people to give it a shot, which would allow more interesting research applications:

“It’s all about numbers and having as many people enrolled as possible.”

Some readers may recall that I was offered a free genetic test while at the World Economic Forum earlier this year, along with my colleague Gideon Rachman. So I have some insight into whether it is worth doing.

My FT column this week is about Roche’s offer to buy the stake in Genentech it does not already own. I believe it is taking risks with its reputation and the value that it has gained from Genentec. It starts as follows:

One of the entertaining things about business is that executives must sometimes, in the interests of their shareholders, say one thing for years and then reverse themselves and declare the opposite.

This can involve double-crossing, or at least angering, those who believed the original story. So it goes.

It often happens when a big company takes over a small one. At first, the acquirer insists that its new subsidiary will be left alone and its managers will be free to carry on as before without interference from head office. Then, one day, the long leash becomes a short one.

The question is not whether this is bad behaviour – in fact, it is life – but whether it is wise. Will those who work at the subsidiary be so annoyed that they walk out, leaving little behind? Or will the U-turn work?

You can read the rest here and comment below.

I spent yesterday afternoon at the New School in New York listening to a panel of Senators and one Congressman discussing what to do about the US healthcare system. They were sponsors of rival bills in Congress intended to reform the expensive and inefficient status quo.

Aiming off for the fact that it was a New York academic audience confronting a bunch of inside-the-Beltway reformers, a few things struck me.

1. The US  system is not only widely regarded as absurd by the outside world but has lost credibility in the US itself. That is not just because the country spends $2,300bn a year on health while an estimated 47m Americans are without health insurance. Important constituencies, notably employers that are the primary sponsors of health insurance, are also groaning under the strain.

2. A single-payer universal healthcare system such as the National Health Service in the UK is a non-starter. John Conyers, a Congressman who has proposed extending Medicare – the federal programme for the elderly – to the whole population, won applause from the audience by denouncing flaws in the US system. But the US is simply not going to accept a "socialised" health care system.

3. Change is going to come. One of Hillary Clinton’s achievements in the current campaign for the Democrat nomination is to put behind her nasty memories of Hillarycare and propose a health reform that is radical and yet acceptable. My colleague Clive Crook wrote interestingly about this last month.

4. Nobody quite knows what should be done. As Ron Wyden, a Democrat senator for Oregon, said, you can elicit equal applause from a US audience by denouncing the notion that the government should run healthcare and by criticising the vagaries of US insurers.