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The nation's biggest insurer is starting to dole out bonuses and penalties to nearly 3,000 hospitals as it ties almost $1 billion in payments to the quality of care provided to patients.

Hospice policies that reject patients on the grounds that no one's at home to care for them, while increasingly rare, do still exist around the country. But for many families, that's just not an option.

The insurance pool for people with expensive pre-existing conditions will stay open until the end of March, after another extension by the federal government. Starting this year, the Affordable Care Act bars insurers from rejecting people because of health problems, but they may need more time than originally thought to sign up for coverage.

If a couple divorces, each person's eligibility for insurance-related tax credits will generally be based on his or her own annual income. The former spouse's income won't be counted, even if the couple filed taxes jointly the previous year.

Drugmakers have been criticized for cost-sharing assistance programs that encourage patients to use brand-name drugs instead of cheaper, generic alternatives. The federal government has frowned on the help, but there are expensive medicines for cancer and rheumatoid arthritis that don't have generic equivalents.

Health plans of all kinds typically cover rehabilitative services, such as physical therapy to help people after an accident or illness. But before the Affordable Care Act passed, coverage of similar services to help people learn or maintain functional skills, rather than regain them, was often excluded.

Screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies are supposed to be covered under the Affordable Care Act. But some people are finding that they still end up having to pay for anesthesia and other associated services. And not all insurers are covering all forms of birth control.

Because North Carolina didn't expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, many low-income people who could otherwise benefit from the law don't. But there are often ways to bump up their incomes just enough to help them qualify for subsidized coverage.

It's still too soon to say whether this is a historically bad flu season. But it's already clear that emergency rooms around the country are filled with feverish throngs that are much larger than during the last flu season.

As the long, slow demise of company-sponsored retiree health insurance continues, some firms are contracting with Medicare exchanges to try to ease the transition for their former employees.