The red and blue of healthcare

Excerpts from the Globe's blog on the Boston-area medical community.

Most Republicans think the US healthcare system is the best in the world. But Democrats? Not so much.

Americans are sharply divided along party lines when it comes to their views of the US healthcare system versus other countries' programs, according to the poll conducted two weeks ago by the Harvard School of Public Health and Harris Interactive.

One in five Republicans said they favor a presidential candidate who believes US healthcare should be made more like the universal healthcare systems in Canada, France, and Great Britain. But more than half of Democrats and more than a third of independents said they would likely back such a candidate.

At a time when government biomedical funding is flat and junior researchers are struggling to get grants, 200 senior scientists nationwide have been awarded six or more federal grants each, according to the journal Nature. Among those who hold more than eight grants: Dr. Bruce Rosen (left), a brain imaging scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Rosen said in an e-mail interview that senior scientists typically have broader responsibilities for large labs that work with other researchers throughout the world. He has only one individual investigator grant, for work on stroke recovery; the others are collaborative grants across several institutions, he said.

"It might not be fair to leave readers with the impression that . . . these 'big grant getters' are really simply hogging money that should go to others," he said. "Like myself, I suspect that many or most are in fact providing exactly the kind of research opportunities envisioned by the NIH for a broad variety of research and researchers."

Students meet their Match Day

Fourth-year medical students discovered Thursday where they will spend the next stage of their medical training. This year the Match Day formula sorted more than 15,000 US medical school seniors into programs at teaching hospitals. There was a small uptick in family medicine choices nationwide, coming at a time when primary care doctors are in short supply.

At the four medical schools in Massachusetts, primary care specialties - family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, and pediatrics - drew almost half the soon-to-be MDs graduating from the three schools in Boston. At University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, the tally was higher, consistent with its mission focusing on primary care. Both levels are similar to previous years.

ELIZABETH COONEY

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