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Trimming the rise in obesity in the U.S. by just 1 percent over the next two decades would reduce health care costs by by $85 billion. The fight isn't likely to be cheap. But new researchers shows that even a small dent in obesity rates could pay off.

In Michigan, areas with more cardiac catheterization labs — places where patients are diagnosed for heart problems — tended to have more interventions than those with fewer labs.

Students aren't employees, and student health plans are generally individual policies that the students buy on their own, even if they're offered through the college. So mandatory coverage of birth control for students shouldn't be delayed past August, but it could take longer for the faculty, advocates say.

The state legislature is now mulling a change to allow trained home care aides to administer medications to Medicaid patients while working under a nurse's supervision. If the proposal becomes law, it could save the state a bundle.

Until a national health insurance mandate takes effect in 2014, states run stopgap pools to cover people with pre-existing conditions. The federal funds to pay for the coverage are being stretched thin in many states.

Despite the federal overhaul of health care, people in the pools are left out because of a wrinkle in legal language. The high-risk pools aren't licensed as insurers in most states, so they're not subject to the federal law.

The California health exchange has focused on drumming up interest in coverage during the first month of operation. Certified enrollment counselors can barely keep up with the requests for assistance that are rolling in.

People are looking for answers to complex health insurance problems. The navigators whose job it is to help are going to have their work cut out for them now that that the Affordable Care Act is moving into high gear.

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.

Though the Obama administration says that the nation is entering a new era of lower health care spending, an analysis from the agency that oversees Medicare says probably not. Those economists say that health spending will escalate as the economy improves, as it has in past economic recoveries.