Alex Wayne

Hope has been scuttled for one Texas woman and thousands of other health care workers across Texas when the state opted out of the Medicaid expansion earlier this month. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people in the U.S.

Judith Mayer Lynn, uninsured and battling breast cancer, should be a fan of the Affordable Care Act. Instead, she barely knows about it.

Less than five months before the Affordable Care Act fully kicks in, hospitals are improving care and saving millions of dollars with one of the least touted but potentially most effective provisions of the law.

President Barack Obama’s use of federal loans to bankroll untested businesses is sparking controversy again, this time over a $6 billion program to create nonprofit competitors to commercial health insurers.

Anne Filipic, who helped Barack Obama secure a turning-point victory in the 2008 Iowa caucuses, plans to send thousands of volunteers door-to-door this year on a new campaign: to help the president sell the Affordable Care Act to the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she talked with health care companies she regulates, including Johnson & Johnson, about helping a nonprofit group publicize the Affordable Care Act.

The health agency said last week that Sebelius had been calling advocacy groups, doctors, churches and “companies not regulated by HHS” since March, asking for contributions to an independent nonprofit group promoting the health law.

President Barack Obama’s health secretary has called companies and other organizations, seeking financial contributions to help promote the 2010 health care law that takes full effect next year.

The data from more than 3,000 hospitals that take Medicare, the government’s health program for the elderly, showed that in some cases costs can drastically vary for hip replacements, bone fractures and treatments for kidney failure. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it released the data for the first time to make the overall health system “more affordable and accountable.”

U.S. hospitals charge prices that, at times, can be thousands of dollars different for the same medical procedures, even within towns or states, according to federal data released today.

People with health insurance saw increases in their medical costs slow from 2009 to 2011, signaling potential structural changes in the industry that could cut health care inflation and save the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two studies.

The suit, filed last week in federal court in Washington, revolves around an Internal Revenue Service rule that provides tax credits for people shopping for health insurance on new government-run marketplaces, called exchanges, regardless of where they live.

Republicans and the drug industry have urged a repeal of the board, and Obama hasn’t yet appointed any of its members. A spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry’s Washington-based lobbying group, didn’t immediately comment on the decision.