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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.

Call it the $2.8 trillion enigma. That's the amount Americans spent on health care in 2012. The good news is that health spending slowed unexpectedly for the fourth consecutive year. The enigma is that no one really knows why. Despite many theories, there's no expert consensus.

Restaurants know customers eat more at fixed-price buffets than when they pay À la carte. Economists have been saying for years that the same kind of behavior goes on in the federal Medicare program for seniors and the disabled.

2014 has been identified as the make-or-break year for electronic health records (EHRs). Despite a more than $22 billion federal investment to reward meaningful use of EHR technology, new report findings suggest that the government has failed to put protections in place that would prevent the technology from increasing costs, including through overbilling.

Hospital officials, Democratic lawmakers and advocates for the poor complained Monday that the state's proposed rule on health insurance navigators could cripple efforts to educate Texans about their coverage options.

State governments have a unique opportunity to transform the current health care system into one that provides higher-quality care at lower costs.

In an effort to save $1.3 billion over five years and curb the abuse of prescription drugs that Medicare pays for, the CMS is proposing an array of changes to Medicare's Part D and Advantage programs.

Across the country, Medicaid expansion varies among states. Some experts worried about whether that variation would drive Americans to relocate to other states so that they could obtain better medical coverage. However, those concerns are likely to prove unfounded, according to a recent study from Harvard.

Hospitals across the nation delivered $45.9 billion in uncompensated care during 2012, according to an annual study of the American Hospital Association.

The share of individuals who will gain insurance coverage under the federal healthcare reform law will vary sharply from state to state, according to a report released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

New federal estimates show that U.S. health spending growth continued to grow at a historically low rate in 2012 even as the economy rebounded.

An annual report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finds that health spending totaled $2.8 trillion in 2012, which accounted for 17.2% of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) and was down slightly from the 17.3 % of GDP in 2011.

Republican leaders in Idaho on Friday dampened expectations about broadening Medicaid healthcare eligibility this year for poor residents in the state, on the same grounds they balked in 2013: Before taking extra federal money, the existing system should be overhauled to encourage beneficiaries to take personal responsibility for their health.