Daily Rounds: A Good (Frozen) Egg; Paying Hospitals For Performance; Wellness Blossoms; Suicide Kits To Go

Egg Freezing Puts The Biological Clock On Hold | WBUR & NPR "Dr. Alan Copperman of Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York wastes no time laying out this harsh reality: By the time a woman hits her 40s, 90 percent of her eggs are abnormal. The chances of a typical 40-year-old getting pregnant in any given month? Ten percent. Unless, that is, she gets pregnant with her younger eggs, eggs she's frozen years before." (WBUR | 90.9 FM)

Medicare Plan to Link Cost to Performance Rankles Hospitals - NYTimes.com "For the first time in its history, Medicare will soon track spending on millions of individual beneficiaries, reward hospitals that hold down costs and penalize those whose patients prove most expensive." (nytimes.com)

Employers seeing pluses in keeping workers healthy - The Boston Globe “Four years ago, maybe 5 percent of our clients were actively promoting wellness programs, and today it’s about 70 percent,’’ said Kristie Z. Howard, a vice president at Longfellow Benefits, a Boston firm that helps companies design these programs. Fueling employers’ interest is the federal health care law, which earmarks $200 million in grants for small businesses to establish wellness programs.In Massachusetts, the Connector Authority, the agency that oversees the state’s universal health insurance law, will begin next month to offer a 5 percent premium discount to small businesses that buy wellness programs through the agency." (boston.com)

Suicide kits: Woman selling 'suicide kits' reignites right-to-die debate - latimes.com "Sharlotte Hydorn peddles a product touted for its deadly simplicity. Inside her butterfly-decorated boxes are clear plastic bags and medical-grade tubing. A customer places the bag over his head, connects the tubing from the bag to a helium tank, turns the valve and breathes. The so-called suicide kit asphyxiates a customer within minutes. Orders come from all over the world, from people young and old, depressed and terminally ill. "People commit suicide by jumping out of windows and buildings, and hanging themselves," said the 91-year-old former elementary school science teacher. Her product, she says, ends lives peacefully, leaving people "eternally sleepy." (Los Angeles Times)