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As healthcare providers start to bear more financial risk for managing population health, they're making larger investments in commercial insurance assets to build their actuarial expertise.

Enrollment in the health law's marketplaces surged in December, and the administration's report on the numbers made headlines on Monday - but the national story isn't the whole story.

As policymakers consider ways to slow the growth in Medicare spending as part of broader efforts to reduce the federal debt or offset the cost of other spending priorities, some have proposed to increase beneficiary contributions through higher Medicare premiums.

People seeking urgent medical could face longer wait times and other challenges as demand increases under Obamacare, U.S. emergency doctors said in a report on Thursday that gives the nation's emergency infrastructure a near failing grade.

Hospitals, physicians face mounting policy and market pressure to disclose prices.

In a bid to improve treatment for men with high-risk prostate cancer, some researchers want to take a page from the playbook for breast cancer.

The CMS has moved quickly to replace two recently departed senior executives. The experience levels of the announced replacements should allay concerns that the mini-exodus, which some saw as fallout from launch issues with HealthCare.gov, would hurt agency operations, former CMS insiders agreed.

Strategies that identify new uses for existing drugs have grown in popularity in recent years as a way of quickly developing new disease therapies. Zebrafish models are cost-effective platforms for rapidly conducting drug screens as well as basic stem cell, genetic, cancer and developmental research.

Patients at high risk - including those with cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease - will be covered under the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) until March 31, thanks to a decision this week from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced its intention to release Medicare payment data of individual physicians on a case-by-case basis. The agency seeks to publicly impart the information following a 2013 federal court decision that overturned an injunction previously barring the release of physicians' Medicare payments.

Jodi Daniel, director of ONC's Office of Policy and Planning, wrote that ONC will "develop a policy framework for putting the person more at the center of their own health and health care, enabled by health IT."

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., Wednesday strongly rejected a major challenge to the healthcare reform law, ruling that the law allows the federal government to offer premium subsidies to people who buy insurance coverage through the federal insurance exchange and not just through state-run exchanges.

Health insurers are expressing measured optimism for enrollment in the coverage they're selling on the health insurance exchanges after quietly grumbling for weeks that the fumbled rollout was undermining their business plans.

Maryland's health exchange Web site is still riddled with glitches and might need to be completely overhauled - or even abandoned - once the first round of enrollment ends March 31, a member of Gov. Martin O'Malley's Cabinet told lawmakers Tuesday.

The tens of thousands of people with a history of serious illnesses who are enrolled in high-risk insurance pools created under the health care law will have an additional two months -- until March 31 -- before they lose that coverage, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday.

The American Medical Association is warning that the Obama administration could violate physicians' privacy rights if it poorly implements its new policy for informing the public how much money Medicare pays to individual doctors. But other groups say the administration did not go far enough in making payment data broadly accessible.

Who's purchasing health plans through the insurance exchanges? According to the federal government, more than 2.1 million people have enrolled into private insurance coverage through December, and an additional 1.6 million became eligible for financial assistance under Medicaid.

For the first time in decades, HHS may start telling the public exactly how much money individual doctors earn treating Medicare patients.

The newly insured will face barriers to receiving care as they attempt to prove to doctors and pharmacists that they have coverage through the exchanges. In addition, many of those same patients are having difficulty in understanding which doctors are included in their network plans.

The promise of the Affordable Care Act is right there in its title: Affordable. Yet, anti-poverty agencies across the country fear that even with the federal financial assistance available under the law, health insurance will remain unaffordable for significant numbers of low-income Americans.

Most patients remain thoroughly befuddled about the law. Half of uninsured adults who could get policies now through the health insurance marketplaces have never tried to buy insurance on their own, and, in California, nearly one out of two poor adults don't know they would qualify for Medicaid.

About 96 percent of Covered California customers are picking among the "big four" plans, according to a "Road to Reform" analysis of October and November enrollment figures. (Based on off-the-record interviews with several health plan officials, a similar trend continued through December).

New Mexico officials say the state is facing its worst shortage of primary-care providers at a time when thousands are expected to enroll in state and federal health insurance exchanges.

Maryland could set a precedent as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services gives approval for a plan that would allow the state to continue setting hospital reimbursement rates for Medicare beneficiaries.

Healthcare, an engine of employment through the recession, shed 6,000 jobs in December with payroll declines in ambulatory care and hospitals.

Starting next September, women at increased risk for breast cancer will be able to get some drugs shown to help prevent the disease without a co-pay, the Obama administration said Thursday.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won federal approval Thursday to expand Medicaid coverage to as many as 83,000 low-income childless adults while ending coverage for about 77,000 childless adults who earn between 100% to 133% of the federal poverty level.

The state of Maryland is announcing a new initiative with the federal government to modernize the state's unique rate-setting system for hospital services.

The US Chamber of Commerce says it aims to include the Affordable Care Act in its list of 2014 objectives. Nearly 2 years ago, the chamber voiced its intent to repeal the health reform bill after it was enacted in 2010.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has accepted that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is here to stay and, rather than continue calling for its complete repeal, will work this year to change what it sees as flaws in the 2010 law, the business group's president and CEO said Wednesday.