Fact-Checking Campaign Rhetoric on Health Reform

Here's what we're checking out today:

Health Reform: The Washington Post and Kaiser Health News deftly fact-check election-season rhetoric about the impact of health reform. 

Doctor $: Your must-read of the day: ProPublica's project Dollars for Docs: What Drug Companies are Paying Your Doctor. Stay tuned for Antidote blogger William Heisel's upcoming post what you can learn from this excellent example of database reporting.

Hospital Quality: The federal government's Hospital Compare database doesn't really help Medicare patients make good decisions about which hospital to select for surgery, according to a new study published in the Archives of Surgery. FierceHealthcare's Dan Bowman has the story and links to other coverage.

Drug Safety: Johnson & Johnson is having a really bad year. After recalling tens of millions of bottles of Tylenol and other consumer products for a musty odor, the conglomerate just recalled another 128,000 Tylenol bottles for the same problem, Reuters' Ransdell Pierson reports.

Cancer: This is not good: the number of cancer patients is expected to far outpace the number of specialists to care for them, prompting worries about access to care, according to NPR's Patti Neighmond.