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Maryland-based Evergreen Health Co-op is one of nearly two dozen nonprofit insurers created by the health act. They will be owned by the policyholders and are supposed to add competition and lower prices for coverage. they're supposed to add competition and lower prices for medical coverage. But they can't do either without customers.

The president offered a fix for people whose insurance coverage has been canceled because it didn't meet the minimum standards of the federal health law. But will insurers follow through? And even if they want to, will state regulators let them?

Running a hospital that scores well on keeping more patients alive or providing extensive charity care doesn't translate into a compensation bump for top executives. Nonprofit hospitals have been under scrutiny for paying high salaries to chief executives while skimping on benefits for their communities.

The Affordable Care Act included a sales tax on medical devices that is supposed to help pay for the expansion of health insurance coverage. But the tax is being levied on some devices, such as ultrasound scanners, that are used to diagnose and treat animals instead of humans.

Before a colonoscopy, ask the doctor about his or her detection rate for polyps. And find out how long, on average, the doctor takes to withdraw the scope from the patient. About 10 minutes is the optimal duration, a recent analysis says.

The government has identified hundreds of hospitals where Medicare patients are incurring especially high or low bills. Hospitals around McAllen, it turns out, aren't as terrible as they were made out to be, according to Medicare's calculations of how much it spent for the average patient from three days before admission to a month after discharge.

Insurers and employers are looking to stem the rising costs of expensive specialty drugs. One approach is to vary the copayment depending on the health value they calculate the drugs provide.

A change in guidelines for psychiatric diagnoses would add problem gambling as an addictive disorder. The designation would clear a path to add other behavioral problems — such as sex or Internet addiction — in the future.

Enrollment in health savings accounts grew 18 percent last year as employers continued to steer workers into high-deductible medical plans.

Will the administration's health law survive the Supreme Court? A majority of bettors think not. Over at Intrade, a "prediction market" for current events, the betting gave chances of about 58 percent that the court will disallow the mandate.