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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?

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 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.

Among those who stand to benefit the most from the expansion of Medicaid are homeless adults. Many of these men and women are mentally ill or addicted to drugs and alcohol. Enrolling them can be difficult, but the benefits should be substantial.

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.

As biotech investments and medical device development falters, hospitals are turning to other avenues to help cut costs: streamlining billing systems and investing in simpler medical products.

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.

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.

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.

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.