Daily Rounds: 'RomneyCare' View From Mass.; Medicare Safety Rankings; 9/11 Cancers?; Infertility Illusion

Health Care in Massachusetts: Abject failure or work in progress? - "Romney is now a GOP presidential contender, and that's made the Massachusetts universal health care law a political football. Romney's rival Rick Santorum recently called it "an abject failure." But "Romneycare," as Santorum and others call it, isn't controversial in its home state. And a lot of people here don't call it Romneycare, because it took the support of a lot of other people – Democratic legislators, business leaders, insurers, hospitals and doctors, consumer groups – to get it passed." (NPR)

Teaching hospitals decry Medicare's low safety rankings (Kaiser Health News via Boston Globe) - "Medicare’s first public effort to identify hospitals with patient safety problems has pinpointed many prestigious teaching hospitals in Boston and around the nation, raising concerns about quality at these places but also bolstering objections that the government’s measurements are skewed. Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, both affiliated with Harvard Medical School; and Boston Medical Center, affiliated with Boston University, were among those having substantially more complications than the average hospital, according to data evaluated by the Medicare program." (KHN via Globe)

Police union seeks data for cancer links to 9/11 (The New York Times) - "On Sunday, police union leaders and elected officials displayed that [9/11] uniform as they called upon Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to release police medical records to a panel that is studying possible links between cancer and contaminants unleashed by the destruction of the trade center.

Young people totally think they're infertile (Jezebel) - "You know how today's young women are just waltzing through life, oblivious to their shriveling ovaries? Actually, for a lot of women (and men) the opposite is true — they wrongly assume they're infertile. And that can cause its own set of problems. According to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins, 13% of men and 19% of women ages 18-29 think they're probably infertile. Actually, only 6% of women in this age group are likely to be infertile." (Jezebel)